Constitutive modelling of the mechanical response of a polycaprolactone based polyurethane elastomer: Finite element analysis and experimental validation through a bulge test

RULL NAHUEL; FRONTINI, P.M.

Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design

SAGE Publications Ltdinfo@sagepub.co.uk

Año: 2020

The mechanical behaviour of a high performance polycaprolactone based polyurethane elastomer (PCL) up to largestrain levels, cyclic loading and equibiaxial stress has been assessed. The PCL can be categorised as a rubber-like material,thus, showing nonlinear stress-strain behaviour. The materials elastic network is based on a high molecular weight PCLpolyol which gives the material its elastomeric behaviour similar to polyurethanes. In this work, mechanical testing capturingthe major features of the stress-strain curve under different loading conditions is performed. Both, uni-axial loading-unloading curves and bulge test are thoroughly studied through the addition of digital image correlation (DIC) tomeasure the strain field. Results show the presence of hysteresis and loading configuration dependence. Then, two wellknownhyperelastic constitutive models, the Arruda-Boyce eight-chain and Bergstro¨m-Boyce, were fitted to the uni-axialmonotonic and cyclic test data and compared to the bulge test experimental results through finite element analysis(FEA) in Abaqus.