Prestrained biaxial DMA investigation of viscoelastic nonlinearities in highly filled elastomers

Highly filled elastomers present strong nonlinear mechanical behavior. This study proposes a biaxial dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) experiment to study the prestrain induced nonlinearity. This phenomenon has already been observed for uniaxial tests, revealing an increase of the amplitude of the dynamic modulus with prestrain. The novelty proposed here is to investigate the problem under biaxial conditions. For this purpose, a specific apparatus and an appropriate specimen have been designed. Strains and stresses have been measured using localization formulae and compared with measurements from digital image correlation and finite element computations. Biaxial DMA tests were performed on a propellant specimen, for different values of biaxial prestrain. The material is a highly filled elastomer with an important influence of the prestrain on the global viscoelastic behavior. The results exhibit increasing amplitude of the complex modulus with increasing prestrain, as in uniaxial experiments. Moreover, the dependence can be characterized using the second invariant of the prestrain, and the viscoelastic behavior is modeled using a closed-form spectrum of relaxation times.