ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: The Mullins effect (Mullins 1948) as observed in uniaxial compression of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) foam is modeled with a simplified continuum damage approach. This particular foam shows a characteristic cyclic softening behavior in which all softening is achieved in the first cycle. By this, we mean that the second cycle to the same strain level as achieved in the first cycle demonstrates the same stress-strain curve as subsequent cycles to the same strain level.
This particular behavior is well modeled with a continuum damage approach combined with the CHIP-Foam model (Lewis 2016) for elastomeric foams. In this work, we demonstrate that fitting the CHIPFoam model to a softened response and developing an evolution equation for a modulus from first cycle data provides a reasonably good prediction of response seen in multiple cycles to different strain levels.
