Constitutive modeling of the Mullins effect and cyclic stress softening in filled elastomers

The large strain behavior of filled rubbers is characterized by the strong Mullins effect, permanent set, and induced anisotropy. Strain controlled cyclic tests also exhibit a pronounced hysteresis as a strain rate independent phenomenon. Prediction of these inelastic features in elastomers is an important challenge with immense industrial and technological relevance. In the present paper, a micromechanical model is proposed to describe the inelastic features in the behavior of filled elastomers. To this end, the previously developed network decomposition concept [Dargazany and Itskov, Int. J. Solids Struct. 46, 2967 (2009)] is extended and an additional network (CP network) is added to the classical elastic rubber (CC) and polymer-filler (PP) networks. The new network is considered to account for the damage of filler aggregates in the cyclic deformation as the source of hysteresis energy loss. The accuracy of the resulting model is evaluated in comparison to a new set of experimental data.