Abstract
Composite materials have been long developed to improve the mechanical properties such as strength and toughness. Most composites are non-stretchable which hinders the applications in soft robotics. Recent papers have reported a new design of unidirectional soft composite with superior stretchability and toughness. This paper presents an analytical model to study the toughening mechanism of such composite. We use the Gent model to characterize the large deformation of the hard phase and soft phase of the composite. We analyze how the stress transfer between phases deconcentrates the stress at the crack tip and enhances the toughness. We identify two types of failure modes: rupture of hard phase and interfacial debonding. We calculate the average toughness of the composite with different physical and geometric parameters. The experimental results in literature agree with our theoretical predictions very well.
Highlights
We calculate the average toughness of the composite and compare the theoretical predictions with the experimental results in literature
We find that the stress concentration at the crack tip is much reduced in such composite
We calculate the average toughness of the composite with different physical and geometric parameters
Summary
The emergence of novel soft materials such as elastomers and gels, enable enormous applications including soft robots (Wallin et al, 2018; Whitesides, 2018), ionotronics (Lin et al, 2016; Wirthl et al, 2017; Yang and Suo, 2018; Yuk et al, 2019), stretchable electronics (Minev et al, 2015; Park et al, 2018), and wound dressings (Blacklow et al, 2019). When the composite is stretched, the soft phase near the crack tip greatly shears, the hard phase is greatly stretched and stores most of the elastic energy. We calculate the stress concentration of the composite and identify two types of failure modes: rupture of hard phase and interfacial debonding.
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