Simple shearing of rubberlike materials filled with parallel fibers at large strain
Journal of Composite Materials
Published online on July 06, 2016
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanical behavior of fiber-reinforced incompressible nonlinearly elastic solids under large simple shear deformations. Two different rubberlike materials, with distinct properties of adhesion, were reinforced by a single family of parallel fibers of nylon. Fibers of nylon 6 monofilament fishing line with diameters of 0.25, 0.45, and 0.80 mm were used. Fiber-reinforced specimens were tested under monotonic load at constant temperature, and values of amount of shear were obtained by the digital image correlation method. A phenomenological constitutive model is proposed to predict the mechanical behavior of the transversely isotropic materials. The proposed model takes into account the shear and stretch in the fiber, and fiber-matrix iterations. These iterations are related to the quality of the fiber-matrix bonding and fibers pullout. The obtained results can be useful in understanding the mechanical behavior of fiber-reinforced rubberlike solids and fibrous soft tissues.