A Therotical Platform to Predict the Contribution of Parallel Damage Mechanisms in Deformation of Filled Elastomers

Owing to unique physical/mechanical properties of elastomeric nano-composites, they are widely used in load-bearing applications. In view of their critical role in many systems, it is important to understand how to predict the failure of components with respect to parallel damage processes that occurs inside them. The contemporary ways of introducing safety factors are not economic, nor environmental friendly. The eventual solution here is modeling the parallel damage mechanisms. A platform is developed to allow integration of existing models of inelastic phenomena in elastomers into one comprehensive model that can take into account the effect of parallel damage mechanisms. Here, we only take into account damage phenomena in quasi-static loading, namely Hysteresis, Mullins effect, permanent set, induced anisotropy and strain induced crystallization. The platform consists of an entropic description of the rubber matrix as several parallel networks, where each network can be assigned to specific damage phenomena.