Open Access

ARTICLE

A Micromechanical Approach to Simulate Rubberlike Materials with Damage

M. Timmel¹, M. Kaliske¹, S. Kolling², R. Mueller³

1 Institute for Structural Mechanics, University of Leipzig,Germany.
2 DaimlerChryslerAG, Sindelfingen, Germany.
3 Institute of Mechanics, TU Darmstadt, Germany.

Computers, Materials & Continua 2007, 5(3), 161-172. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2007.005.161

Abstract

A damage approach based on a material model with microstructural evolution is presented. In contrast to phenomenological constitutive laws, the material response is given by mechanisms at the microscale. At first, a micromechanical substructure is chosen, which represents the overall material behaviour. Then the system is described using a micromechanical model. A geometrical modification of the microstructure is allowed to minimize the total energy. Consequently, the global stiffness is reduced. In this context, thermodynamical considerations are based on configurational forces. With the help of the discussed approach, void growth phenomena of materials, which lead to softening behaviour, can be taken into account numerically. In this article, the influence of the microstructure in hyperelastic materials is investigated. Hereby, we discuss evolution methods for small and finite strain problems. Finally, the implementation of this damage approach in an explicit finite element solver is described in detail.

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Keywords

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