Material Property Characterization for Elastomers within the Framework of Finite-Deformation Viscoelasticity

Elastomers are polymeric materials that consist of highly mobile long-molecule chains jointed together through crosslinking. The behavior of elastomers is commonly manifested by hyperelasticity and viscosity due to their molecular structure. Any variation of the material microstructure may have an impact on the macroscopic properties of elastomers. Therefore, characterizing the material properties of elastomers with appropriate constitutive models is essential to facilitating their potential applications. Although various constitutive models have been developed to describe the hyperelastic and viscoelastic behaviors of elastomers, it is still challenging to quantify the material properties of elastomers since there exist restrictions and limitations of the constitutive models. This thesis work attempts to develop a material property characterization package that consists of a constitutive model database and the corresponding selection strategy. The constitutive model database is established by adopting various constitutive models to the continuum mechanics framework with the incorporation of nonlinear material viscosity based on polymer dynamics. The feasibility and capability of the material property characterization package is validated by the commonly used filled and unfilled elastomers under different loading conditions, demonstrating a good agreement between the theoretical predictions of the material response and the experimental data. The developed framework is expected to work as a general platform for material property characterization of elastomeric materials