Mechanical modeling of hyper-elastic composites (HEC) is usually associated with two types of challenges. The first type is challenges of elastomeric deformation itself, such as severe geometrical and physical non-linearity, incompressibility, hysteretic response, etc. The second type is composite-related challenges including, among others, anisotropy of material properties, heterogeneous structure, complex damage networks and their numerous mechanisms, etc. Although both types of challenges can be successfully addressed independently (i.e., either as isotropic homogeneous elastomers or linear-elastic composites), their consideration together is still a difficult dilemma to satisfy desired predictive fidelity and costlrobustness of corresponding modeling solutions. Thus, the objective of this study is development of an efficient general framework for analysis of HEC materials and structures specifically for design applications. It summarizes recently developed solutions in a form of integrated approach for robust FEA implementation and systematically covers hyper-elastic deformation of composites and processes of damage initiation and growth. A numerical example of HEC structure is presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed framework and its convenience for engineering analysis.
By: Mark R. Gurvich *