Damage with growth and nucleation of voids in polymers

The aim of the paper is to propose an FE model for nonlinear analysis including damage (associated with nucleation and growth micro-voids) of elastoviscoplastic constitutive equations for polymer. At first, some theoretical details are described and then FE simulations are performed on 3D model. The tensile strain problem is examined for a number of strain path histories, including straining at various rates and rapid changes of strain rate. Sensitivity analysis is performed in order to give a better understanding of the respective role of material parameters in the elasto-viscoplastic behaviour. The results show that the initial voids and strain rate effects are important on damage growth. The effect of some material and environmental parameters such as initial voids and strain rate are investigated. The simulation results are compared with experiments to validate the proposed FE procedure. Successful agreement is obtained between experimental results and the proposed model.