ABSTRACT
The concept of the critical fracture energy incorporated with the proposed stress-strain energy function may be useful to describe the rubber fracture behaviours at a wide range of temperature. This concept leaves open the origin of the energy dissipation in the binding energy represented by κ which may be associated with the internal energy change of rubber elasticity. The rubber mechanics at low temperature with large contribution of the internal energy change is important for engineering application of rubbery materials. The constitutive equation based on the change in internal energy and entropy was derived from the statistical thermodynamics with Hamiltonian equations. The continuous change in elasticity from transition state at lower temperature to rubbery state at higher temperature can be represented by this equation. This equation was used to describe the rubber fracture behaviors at a wide range of temperature and it showed a good agreement with the experimental results.
