Micromechanical Modeling of Creep Behavior in Particle-Reinforced Silicone-Rubber Composites

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A micromechanically based composite model is proposed to study the viscoelastic behavior of solid-filled rubber composites. A nonlinear So-Chen’s (1991) mechanical model which describes the viscoelastic behavior of the rubber matrix is proposed to relate volume-average deformation and stress within the two-phase composite inclusion to the remote (macroscopic) fields. The influence of the volume fractions of inclusions on the overall creep strain of a rubber-matrix composite is investigated at the level of dilute concentration. The creep rate of the rubber matrix, which depends nonlinearly on the creep strain and the primary creep and secondary creep resulting from the viscous flow of creep deformation, is also considered in addition to the usual steady-state, or secondary, creep. The method developed for the calculation of the incremental process is based upon Eshelby’s (1957) equivalence principle of an inhomogeneity-transformation problem and Mori-Tanaka’s (1973) idea of mean-field stress. In order to examine the applicability of the model as well as the nonlinear stretch parameter, a series of experiments on solid-filled silicone rubbers has been carried out, which included constant rate of tensile tests and creep tests. It is demonstrated that this simple, albeit approximate micromechanical modeling is capable of predicting the volume fraction dependence of the time dependent creep, with characteristic consistency with the known elastic behavior.

This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit: