A nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive model with damage and experimental validation for composite solid propellant

The development of a nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive model of composite solid propellant (CSP) coupled with effects of strain rate and confining pressure is essential to assess the reliability of solid propellant grains during ignition operation process. In the present work, a nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive model with novel energy-based damage initiation criterion and evolution model was firstly proposed to describe the coupled effects of confining pressure and strain rate on mechanical responses of CSP. In the developed damage initiation criterion and evolution model, the linear viscoelastic strain energy density was introduced as the damage driving force, and the coupled effects of strain rate, damage history and confining pressure on damage growth were taken into account. Then, uniaxial tensile tests from low strain rates to medium strain rates and various confining pressures, and stress relaxation tests were conducted using a self-made active confining pressure device. Finally, the identification procedures of model parameters and validation results of the constitutive model were presented. Moreover, the master curve of damage initiation parameter was constructed through the time-pressure superposition principle (TPSP). The results show that the developed nonlinear constitutive model is capable of predicting the stress–strain responses of CSP under different strain rates and confining pressures.