An Ogden-like formulation incorporating phase-field fracture in elastomers: from brittle to pseudo-ductile failures

Over the past 50 years the Ogden model has been widely used in material modelling owing to its ability to match accurately the experimental data on elastomers at large strain, as well as its mathematical properties, such as polyconvexity. In this paper, these characteristics are exploited to formulate a finite-strain model that incorporates, through the phase-field approach recently proposed by Wu (Wu 2017 J. Mech. Phys. Solids 103, 72-99) for small strains, a cohesive damage mechanism which leads to the progressive degradation of the material stiffness and to failure under tension. By properly tailoring the constitutive parameters, the model is capable of encompassing a wide range of effects, from brittle to pseudo-ductile failure modes. A plane stress problem is formulated to test the model against experiments on double-network elastomers, which display a pseudo-ductile damage behaviour at large strain, and on conventional rubber compounds with brittle failure. The results show that the proposed model is applicable to fracture coalescence and propagation in a wide range of materials. This article is part of the theme issue 'The Ogden model of rubber mechanics: Fifty years of impact on nonlinear elasticity'.