Rate-dependent phase-field damage modeling of rubber and its experimental parameter identification

Phase-field models have the advantage in that no geometric descriptions of cracks are required, which means that crack coalescence and branching can be treated without additional effort. Miehe and Schänzel (2014) introduced a rate-independent phase-field damage model for finite strains in which a viscous damage regularization was proposed. We extend the model to depend on the loading rate and time by incorporating rubber’s strain-rate dependency in the constitutive description of the bulk, as well as in the damage driving force. The parameters of the model are identified using experiments at different strain rates. Local strain fields near the crack tip, obtained with digital image correlation (DIC), are used to help identify the length scale parameter. Three different degradation functions are assessed for their accuracy to model the rubber’s rate-dependent fracture. An adaptive time-stepping approach with a corrector scheme is furthermore employed to increase the computational efficiency with a factor of six, whereas an active set method guarantees the irreversibility of damage. Results detailing the energy storage and dissipation of the different model constituents are included, as well as validation results that show promising capabilities of rate-dependent phase-field modeling.