Modeling Strongly Shear-Thinning Materials in Abaqus

Modeling strongly shear-thinning materials in Abaqus  

O. H. Yeoh

Abstract

Although Abaqus provides numerous ways to model rubber, it remains difficult to model certain types of behavior, such as strongly shear-thinning as seen in the Payne effect. The theoretical background for hyper-elastic models is reviewed leading to a discussion of a simple technique for modeling strongly shear-thinning materials. The validity of this technique is demonstrated by solving the benchmark problem of torsion of a rubber cylinder with materials that show shear-thinning according to a power-law.