A review on the Mullins effect

Abstract

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.

Superparamagnetic anisotropic elastomer connectors exhibiting reversible magneto-piezoresistivity

“…Analogously to what happens with the elastic properties of the material, this can be justified by the absence of Mullins effect [19][20][21]. The same behavior is observed with the resistivity curves as a function of the applied magnetic field.…”

“…Figure 5a shows the typical behavior of a composite under repeated compression, in pressure versus time curves, in which three cycles of slow-compression and fast decompression are illustrated. It is clear from Figure 5a that the composites display a remarkable elastic behavior (the same magnitude of pressure was required to achieve a 20% strain in consecutive cycles of compression) interpretable as the absence of appreciable Mullins effect [19][20][21]. This behavior was observed regardless the direction of compression ( or  respect to the chains), probably because of the separation (non-adhesion) between the polymer matrix and chains (see Figure 3c).…”

A review on the role of interface in mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of polymer composites

“…For instance, thermally insulating polymers can be transformed into thermal conductors after reinforcing with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [6][7][8]. Moreover, PNCs have demonstrated improved mechanical, gas barrier, solvent resistance, and flammability properties compared to the corresponding neat matrices [3,4,9]. The significant differences in properties of PNCs can be explained by the extremely large interface area of nanofiller.…”

Development of novel synthetic muscle tissues for sports impact surrogates

“…6). This incremental procedure was adopted to investigate the presence of the Mullins effect in the material following previous guidelines and usage by Dorfmann & Ogden (2004) and Diani et al (2009). The Poisson's ratio was an important parameter to measure as only compressive loading tests were conducted; this ratio is the sole determinant of volumetric change in the material and therefore the behaviour in other mechanical loading directions.…”

“…There is currently no consensus as to the best method to quantify the extent of the Mullins effect (Diani et al, 2009). In this study, the maximal stress reductions from the loading curve of the first to last cycle at maximal strain were calculated.…”