On the Simple Tensile Deformation of an Incompressible Rubber Matrix Filled with Non-Adherent Rigid Spheres of Uniform Size Distribution

Two striking features revealed in a photograph (cf Figure 1) of a thin film of rubber binder highly filled with glass beads are: a) that the growth of voids around particles increases with increasing strain and b) that the preferred direction of the void growth seems to be in the direction of the applied macroscopic strain. It is obvious that the local stress field around particles in a deformed composite is not as high as it would be if the binder did not pull away from the filler particles. On the other hand, because of the high rigidity of the particles relative to the binder, the local stress field in the binder will still be significantly higher than the average macroscopic stress field. It is of interest to define both this stress field and the associated dilatation in terms of a simple model