This paper describes experiments and the development of constitutive equations to predict the steady-state response of filled rubber under cyclic loading. An MTS servo-hydraulic machine was used to obtain the dynamic hysteresis curves for a filled rubber compound in uniaxial tension-compression. The material tests were performed with mean strains from −0.1 to 0.1, strain amplitudes ranging from 0.02 to 0.1, and strain rates between 0.01 and 10 s−1. Temporary material set, the Payne effect and rate-dependence were observed from the experimental results. A hyper-viscoelastic constitutive model was developed to characterize the dynamic response of the rubber. A cornerstone of this constitutive modeling was to devise a scheme to evaluate material set and a finite strain, non-linear viscoelastic law from the test data. Predictions of the dynamic hysteresis curves using the proposed constitutive equation were found to be in good agreement with the uniaxial test results.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/michelle_hoofatt/10/