A nonlinear strain-rate dependent constitutive model for uncured rubber materials under large deformation

Uncured rubber possesses remarkable hyperelastic and viscoelastic properties while it undergoes large deformation; therefore, it has wide application prospects and attracts great research interests from academia and industry. In this paper, a nonlinear constitutive model with two parallel networks is developed to describe the mechanical response of uncured rubber. The constitutive model is incorporated with the Eying model to describe the hysteresis phenomenon and viscous flow criterion, and the hyperelastic properties under large deformation are captured by a non-Gaussian chain molecular network model. Based on the model, the mechanical behaviors of hyperelasticity, viscoelasticity and hysteresis under different strain rates are investigated. Furthermore, the constitutive model is employed to estimate uniaxial tensile, cyclic loading–unloading and multistep tensile relaxation mechanical behaviors of uncured rubber, and the prediction results show good agreement with the test data. The nonlinear mechanical constitutive model provides an efficient method for predicting the mechanical response of uncured rubber materials.