The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

An Evaluation of Strain Amplification Concepts via Monte-Carlo Simulations of an Ideal Composite

Govindjee, Sanjay

UCB/SEMM-1996/09, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1996-08, 17 pages (500 C23 96-09)

In the modeling of carbon-black filled elastomers it is important to have a good estimate of the state of the elastomer itself, since many nonlinear effects originate in the matrix material. A common notion in such estimates is the idea of a "strain amplification" factor that relates a macroscopically imposed strain state to the average strain state in the elastomer matrix material. Various theories of strain amplification are compared to the results of a series of Monte-Carlo simulations on an ideal composite with a Neo-Hookean matrix and semi-rigid inclusions.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-96-09.pdf (3 MB)