ABSTRACT
Rubber ageing is nowadays a much discussed topic with a connection to other important phenomena, such as fracture or fatigue.
In this work, a phenomenological constitutive model of chemical ageing of rubber (based on the Lion-Johlitz model (Lion & Johlitz 2012)) was implemented using the finite element method. The main concern was to investigate the possible effects of coupling between thermomechanics and ageing and the effect of oxygen diffusion on the evolution of mechanical properties of aged material and their distribution in the computational domain. Numerical tests were performed to assess the applicability and limits of the model in predicting different types of observed behavior.
Computational tools that can simulate different types of material behavior may be useful not only to real-world simulations, but to meta-research as well, which may enable the development or revision of methods for structural optimization or parameter identification. In particular, numerical simulations are important in cases of inhomogeneous physical fields, which are common when studying elastomers.
