Experimental characterization and constitutive modeling of thermoplastic polyurethane under complex uniaxial loading

This paper presents the testing and constitutive modeling of a Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) compound used in commercial applications. The tested specimens were extracted directly from a TPU sphere used in check valves through water-jet cutting. The tests included tensile and compression tests under complex uniaxial loading protocols to capture different nonlinear phenomena, such as stress softening, hysteresis, relaxation, creep, and rate dependence. The material is modeled assuming a nonlinear elastic equilibrium path that may exhibit stress softening (i.e., Mullins effect), and a hysteretic viscoplastic response that presents rate dependence at three different time scales. To achieve this constitutive behavior, a Parallel Rheological Framework model is used. The nonlinear elastic equilibrium path is modeled using the generalized Yeoh hyperelastic model. The stress softening of the equilibrium path is modeled using the Ogden-Roxburgh damage model on the deviatoric response. The hysteretic viscous response is further split into three viscoplastic chains to represent time dependence at three different time scales in a decoupled way. Each viscoplastic chain is modeled using the Bergstrom-Boyce model with its standard evolution law of the creep strain. The model parameters were found using a stochastic optimization scheme to simultaneously fit all the considered tests. The outstanding agreement between the model and the experimental data across a wide range of loading scenarios provides additional insight into the time-dependent behavior and deformation mechanism of TPUs. Moreover, it shows that the mechanical behavior of these materials can be represented by decoupling the nonlinear viscoplastic behavior in different time scales.