Failure Processes in Elastomers at or Near a Rigid Spherical Inclusion
Abstract
A systematic experimental study has been carried out of two distinct failure phenomena, cavitation and debonding, in an elastomer containing a rigid spherical inclusion. Several elastomers were employed containing glass beads of various diameters, ranging from 60 micrometer to 5000 micrometer, and with chemically-different surfaces. The critical stress for cavitation was found to depend upon Young's modulus E of the elastomer and upon the diameter of the bead. By extrapolation, it was found that the stress for cavitation near an infinitely-large bead is given by 5E/12, as predicted by theory. In contrast, the critical stress for debonding decreased somewhat with increasing Young's modulus of the elastomer. This is attributed to a concomitant decrease in the strength of adhesion between the elastomer and the bead surface, due to rheological effects. The stresses for both cavitation and for debonding were found to vary approximately with the negative half-power of the bead diameter. This suggests that a similar Griffith mechanism governs both failure processes when the bead size is small.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1983
- Accession Number
- ADA132060
Entities
People
- Alan Neville Gent
- Byoungkyeu Park
Organizations
- University of Akron