Evaluation of the appropriate size of the finite element representative volume for filled rubber composite analyses

Abstract

Filled rubber is one of the most widely used materials in engineering products such as tires, conveyor belts, seismic isolators, and etc. Enhancing the mechanical properties of this material can contribute the society through the products with improved performances. For example, increasing the elastic modulus of rubber can improve the stiffness of tire tread blocks which is important for the handling performance of a vehicle. Also, decreasing the visco-elastic loss of it can reduce rolling resistance of tires which has a significant effect to the fuel consumption of a vehicle. Filled rubber is a nano-scale composite material composed of matrix polymers, fillers and some chemical agents. Usually the matrix material is made of natural or synthetic rubber polymer, and the filler is made of carbon black or silica. The mechanical properties such as elastic or visco-elastic responses of this material are determined by interactions between such nano-scale constituents. Because filler particles in rubber compounds aggregate together to build complex and random structures, high resolution nearly 1 nm is required to capture the structures precisely.

First‐Time Investigations on Cavitation in Rubber Parts Subjected to Constrained Tension Using In Situ Synchrotron X‐Ray Microtomography (SRμCT)

“…The first approaches to monitor the deformationinduced structure evolution in rubbers have been performed using advanced imaging techniques, that is, 3D transmission electron microscopy (3D-TEM). Nusser et al, [1] Das et al, [2,3] and Kadowski et al [4] have shown that nanoscale morphological analysis of rubber composites is possible with the help of 3D-TEM. As a result, the knowledge of the evolution of the microstructure of filler-reinforced rubber materials could be improved by information that is barely accessible in 2D methods, for example, the existence of percolated networks [1] or the presence of individual thin layers of graphene nanoplatelets.…”

“…[2,3] Furthermore, results of highresolution 3D-TEM experiments were used for finite element analysis (FEA) to model the nanostructure between filler aggregates, that is, the glassy bridges. [4] However, the 3D-TEM technique has some drawbacks: 1) The 3D reconstructions are…”

Large-scale parallel finite element analysis of interface failure in CFRP models

“…It was developed in a national project in Japan, and is under continuous development and maintenance. Large-scale analysis cases with hundreds of millions of degrees of freedom using FrontISTR have been reported thus far [6,7]. In addition,…”

Computational material design of filled rubbers using multi-objective design exploration

“…For clarification of the mechanism and origin of mechanical properties of filled rubbers, numerical simulation of filled rubbers has been conducted in the past few decades. Recently, large-scale simulation using the model generated by 3D-TEM (transmission electron microtomography) was conducted by Akutagawa et al (2008) and Kadowaki et al (2016) to compute effective material properties. Two-dimensional pattern reverse Monte Carlo analysis was performed to make structural model from the data obtained by time-resolved twodimensional ultra-small angle x-ray scattering (Hagita et al 2007& Hagita et al 2008.…”