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The Mullins' effect remains a major challenge in order to provide good mechanical modeling of the complex behavior of industrial rubber materials. It's been forty years since Mullins [1] wrote his review on the phenomenon and still no general agreement has been found either on the physical source or on the mechanical modeling of this effect. Therefore, we reviewed the literature dedicated to this topic over the past six decades. We present the experimental evidences, which characterize the Mullins' softening. The phenomenon is observed in filled and crystallizing rubbers. Then, the phenomenological models dedicated to fit the mechanical behavior of rubbers undergoing some Mullins' softening are studied. To overcome the limit of a descriptive phenomenological modeling, several authors looked for a physical understanding of the phenomenon. Various theories have been exposed, but none of them has been supported unanimously. Nonetheless, these theories favor the emergence of physically based mechanical behavior laws. We tested some of these laws, which show little predictive abilities since the values of their parameters do not compare well with the physical quantities they are linked to.

A 3D thermoviscoelastic model is proposed to represent the thermomechanical behavior of shape memory polymers. The model is based on a physical understanding of the material behavior and a mechanical interpretation of the stress-strain-temperature changes observed during thermomechanical loading. The model is thermodynamically motivated and is formulated in a finite strain framework in order to account for large strain deformations. Model predictions capture critical features of shape memory polymer deformation and, in some cases, provide very favorable comparisons with experimental results. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 46:486 -492, 2006.