An elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model for polymers at finite strains: Formulation and computational aspects

Journal article, 2016

This paper describes a finite strain elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model to predict the non-linear behaviour of polymeric based materials. The theoretical basis of the material model and the computational treatment are presented. The operator split methodology and the Newton-Raphson method are used to derive the state update algorithm and to obtain the numerical solution. The integration algorithm reduces to the solution of only one scalar non-linear equation. A closed formula for the corresponding consistent tangent operator is presented. Different aspects of the constitutive model and its integration algorithm are investigated by considering a comprehensive set of numerical examples.