Microstructural changes of filled rubber-like materials under cyclic loading

The concept of network decomposition has vastly been used in many micro-mechanical models describing stress-softening of rubber-like materials in the first loading cycle as for example the Mullins-effect. Nevertheless, this concept highly simplifies the rubber matrix by decomposing it into two parallel networks that have no interactions with each other. In order to take into account the interactions between these networks some further extensions to the network decomposition concept seem necessary. To this end, a third network is introduced and the concept of rubber cell is proposed and developed. Using this concept, the influence of the filler network on elasticity of the two networks can be predicted by considering the cell as a RVE. (© 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)