Kautschuk Gummi Kunststoffe, Vol.53, No.12, 716-721, 2000
Towards a new material law for elastomers: Part I
A new material law for elastomers has been developed. The most important innovation in this law is a term which considers the network's ability to store energy from intermolecular interactions during the deformation process. After introducing a theoretical fundamentation - the energetic interaction of a simple model system is investigated with respect to deformation - the new phenomenological function is presented. With this intermolecular-interaction-energy function it is possible to set up stress strain relationships for specific cases like uniaxial strain, equibiaxial strain and pure shear. In order to consider the upswing in the stress-strain curves, the energy function is combined with an entropic approach using the inverse of Langevin's function. By fitting some experimental data it can be shown that one set of parameters can reproduce all different stress-strain curves in excellent agreement.
Keywords:material law;elastomers;stress-strain curves;intermolecular-interaction-energy function Langevin's function