Modeling Viscoelastomers With Nonlinear Viscosity

Consisting of highly mobile and flexible polymer chains, elastomers are known to exhibit viscoelastic behavior. Adopting concepts from the theory of polymer dynamics and finite-deformation viscoelasticity, this work presents a micromacro constitutive model to investigate the viscoelastic behavior of elastomers, in which the material viscosity varies with the macroscopic deformation. The developed model is then applied to study the stress response of elastomers. From the simulation results, it is observed that the developed model exhibits strong capability of capturing the typical response behaviors of elastomers (e.g., strain-softening behavior). A comparison of the stress responses between linear and nonlinear viscosity is also considered in this work. The modeling framework in this paper is expected to provide a general approach and a platform to analyze the viscoelastic behavior of rubber-like materials with nonlinear viscosity.