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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 100
PROCEEDINGS OF THE EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping
Paper 18

A Finite Strain Thermo-Chemo-Mechanical Coupled Model for Filled Rubber

T.A. Nguyen Van1, S. Lejeunes1, D. Eyheramendy2 and A. Boukamel3

1Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
2Ecole Centrale de Marseille, Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France
3Ecole Hassania des Travaux des Publics, Casablanca, Morocco

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
T.A. Nguyen Van, S. Lejeunes, D. Eyheramendy, A. Boukamel, "A Finite Strain Thermo-Chemo-Mechanical Coupled Model for Filled Rubber", in B.H.V. Topping, (Editor), "Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Engineering Computational Technology", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 18, 2012. doi:10.4203/ccp.100.18
Keywords: multi-physics coupling, thermo-chemo-mechanical behaviour, finite element, object-oriented programming, Java.

Summary
In industrial applications, filled rubber parts are usually subjected to strong mechanical and thermal loadings. The high dependence on temperature of their mechanical properties, and a heat build-up phenomenon arising from the dissipative behaviour of the material under dynamic loadings, leads to a strong thermo-mechanical coupling. Furthermore, the material is generally not fully crosslinked in order to optimize its properties. Thus, the curing of the material may continue after processing (during utilization). This phenomenon can be activated as a result of heat aging or chemical aging but it can also be activated together by mechanical actions and by the heat build-up process. Therefore, it is important to take into account this chemical phenomenon in the thermo-mechanical coupling. A phenomenological approach was proposed in [1] to take into account this thermo-chemo mechanical coupling in polymer resin. However, in the literature, the mechanical contribution to chemical processes has not been fully considered. For example, it is shown experimentally in [2] that the hydrostatic pressure could activate the vulcanization process without vulcanization agents.

In this paper, a new thermo-chemo-mechanical model based on the thermodynamics of an irreversible process has been proposed to simulate the evolution of the behaviour (thermal, chemical and mechanical) of filled rubber undergoing complex loadings in finite strain. The proposed phenomenological approach is based on the decomposition of the volume variation in three parts and on the idea that some mechanical effects on the chemical evolution of the material exist and must be taken into account in a thermodynamically consistent manner. Another contribution of this paper resides also in developing an original variational formulation within a monolithic scheme of coupling and a finite element implementation into the code FemJava [3]. The main advantage of this framework is that it is general enough to be applied to a large class of materials and behaviour. It is shown that it is possible to build models that take into account complex thermo-chemo-mechanical coupling. This approach could be naturally extended to many different domains of research: predicting aging or fatigue life, simulating rubber processing or accounting for the non uniform rate of cure fields in rubber parts. Two numerical examples which are designed to reflect industrial application are proposed in this paper to show all coupled phenomena.

References
1
A. Lion, P. Hofer, "On the phenomenological representation of curing phenomena in continuum mechanics", Arch. Mech., 59, 59-89, 2007.
2
M. Bellander, "High Pressure Vulcanization: Crosslinking of Diene Rubbers Without Vulcanization Agents", 1998.
3
D. Eyheramendy, F. Oudin-Dardun, "Advanced Object-Oriented Techniques for Coupled Multiphysics", in B.H.V. Topping, (Editor), "Civil Engineering Computations: Tools and Techniques", Saxe-Coburg Publications, Stirlingshire, UK, Chapter 3, 37-60, 2007. doi:10.4203/csets.16.3

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