Neural Network Based Constitutive Model for Rubber Material

Abstract

Abstract Rubber hyperelasticity is characterized by a strain energy function. The strain energy functions fall primarily into two categories: one based on statistical thermodynamics, the other based on the phenomenological approach of treating the material as a continuum. This work is focused on the phenomenological approach. To determine the constants in the strain energy function by this method, curve fitting of rubber test data is required. A review of the available strain energy functions based on the phenomenological approach shows that it requires much effort to obtain a curve fitting with good accuracy. To overcome this problem, a novel method of defining rubber strain energy function by Feedforward Backpropagation Neural Network is presented. The calculation of strain energy and its derivatives by neural network is explained in detail. The preparation of the neural network training data from rubber test data is described. Curve fitting results are given to show the effectiveness and accuracy of the neural network approach. A material model based on the neural network approach is implemented and applied to the simulation of V-ribbed belt tracking using the commercial finite element code ABAQUS.