EVALUATION OF THE ENERGY PARAMETER-J ON RUBBER-LIKE MATERIALS - COMPARISON BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL RESULTS

The general purpose of our study is the determination of the energy pa rameter J when dealing with fracture of rubber-like materials. The ene rgy parameter J is expressed in a multiplicative form in which a calib ration factor is introduced in order to take into account the finite d imensions of the specimen. The parameter J, issued from fracture tests performed on S.E.N.T specimen of an E.P.D.M rubber is compared with t he the J integral which is computed using a finite element procedure f or the non-linear elastic materials with large deformation. The numeri cal results are in good agreement with the experimental data when cons idering the deeply cracked specimen (a/w greater than or equal to 0.5) . Below this limit, a divergence is pointed out which is attributed to a lack of accuracy of the identification procedure used to determine the experimental calibration factor. When this one is determined using the numerical J integral results, a better concordance is obtained. C opyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd