A unified framework for damage & fracture in rubber-like materials

Date

2025-8-28

Author

Yücel, Ali

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Rubber-like materials have a crucial and extensive role in industry. Rubber materials generally become softer under cyclic loading due to their microstructure, a phenomenon known as Mullins damage. The stress reduction can be regarded as a damage-related response, and the evolution of this damage is essential for accurate material characterization. The prediction of failure is another critical damage condition that defines the capacity of the material. This thesis proposes a unified framework for damage and fracture in rubber-like materials. The behavior of materials is explained with the micro-mechanical motivated model where polymer molecular structure is decomposed into the crosslink-to-crosslink (CC) and the particle-to-particle (PP) parts. The crosslink-to-crosslink (CC) part is modeled with an extended eight-chain model, which is responsible for phase-field damage evolution, and the particle-to-particle (PP) part, which is responsible for Mullins damage, is expressed by affine free-network theory with a microsphere model. The Mullins damage response evolves with historical damage and the energy of the responsible part. The fracture mechanism in rubber materials can be modeled using a crack phase-field approach, where an energy-based failure criterion is employed. The evolution of damage within the phase-field framework is governed by a tunable degradation function of Hermitian polynomial form, which modulates the material response through the free energy function of the crosslink-to-crosslink (CC) part.

Subject Keywords

Mullins damage, Phase-field fracture, Hyperelasticity, Damage-coupled hyperelasticity, Polymer network degradation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116066

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis