Large Deformation Cohesive-Zone Element for Fracture in Rubbery Polymers

Elastomeric materials demonstrate large process zones by undergoing large deformations, chain scission and crazing prior to fracture. Formation of such crazing zones are owing to the competition between the intermolecular covalent and van der Walls forces. Thus, they cannot be modeled directly using continuum mechanics. 

However, to accurately capture the fracture behavior at the macroscale, such effects and averaged behavior can be captured in simulations using cohesive zone models (CZM). CZM’s are convenient for modeling fracture phenomenon owing to their suitability to fit into the conventional FEM framework. In this work, a 3D cohesive zone element is developed considering material and geometric nonlinearities and suitable for modeling large deformations and rotations.