Tutorial Number 21: Compression

and Stress Relaxation of a

viscoelastic rubber seal
Stefano Morlacchi
August 2015

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 1. Introduction
In this tutorial, you will investigate the time-dependent viscoelastic behaviour of a
rubber seal after compression. You will use the Abaqus calibration tool to
calibrate a linear viscoelastic material model of a generic rubber starting from
stress-relaxation test-data. Quadrangular 2D plane strain elements will be used.

When you complete this tutorial, you will be able to:

- Calibrate a linear viscoelastic material model starting from experimental
stress relaxation test data.
- Create a model to compress a rubber seal with a *static procedure and
then evaluate its stress relaxation using a *visco procedure.

Preliminaries

- The model is based on the SI units based on millimetres.

Figure 1: Consistent sets of units available in Abaqus.

2. Setting up the model

Open the Abaqus database file Tutorial 21.cae
This file contains the geometry of the two parts, the 2D planar rubber seal and a
rigid component used to simulate the compression. Geometry is in mm so
material properties and loading conditions have to be defined accordingly to the
table above.

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 3. Material and section properties
Enter the property module and define a new material model for rubber. You will
define first the instantaneous elastic response of the material through the
*Hyperelastic mechanical behaviour (Figure 2) and then the time-dependent
mechanical properties through the *Viscoelastic keyword.

1. Go into the Property Module and click the Create Material icon. In the Edit
Material dialog box, name the material Rubber. From the material editors menu
bar, select Mechanical Elasticity Hyperelastic, select Neo-Hooke as
Strain Energy Potential, Coefficients as Input source and Instantaneous as
Moduli time scale. Enter 200 and 0.0 as C10 and D1 coefficients, respectively.

Figure 2. Stress Strain curve of the instantaneous elastic response of the rubber defined
by means of a Neo-Hooke strain energy potential.

2. Figure 3 shows the time-dependent behaviour of the rubber evaluated

though a stress relaxation test at 5% strain. The material will be modelled with
a linear viscoelastic model calibrated using Abaqus which is valid only if the time-
dependent properties are not dependent on the stress/strain levels. In this case,
you can notice that mechanical properties degrade in 50s to reach the 30% of the
initial values (Fig. 3).

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 3. In the Edit Material dialog box of the Rubber material model, select
Mechanical Elasticity Viscoelastic, select Time as Domain, Relaxation
test data as Time, enter 5 as Maximum number of Prony series and 0.01 as
Allowable average root-mean-square error. Select Shear Test Data as Test data
and enter the values in the middle and right columns as shown in Figure 4. Set
0.3 as long term shear modulus. Click Ok and click OK.

Stress Relaxation test at 5% strain

Nominal Stress Normalized Stress Time
200 1 0.01
180 0.9 0.4
164 0.82 1
144 0.72 2
112 0.56 5
88 0.44 10
76 0.38 20
60 0.3 50

Figure 3. Left, stress relaxation test data at 5% strain. The middle column represents the
stress data normalized by the initial stress value and it is plotted in the right plot.

Figure 4. Definition of the rubber viscoelastic properties.

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 4. Right click the material called Rubber in the model tree and click on Evaluate.
Unselect Perform Hyperelastic evaluation in the first tab. Move to the Viscoelastic
tab, accept the default option in the Available Input Data area and select the
Stress Relaxation Mode only in the Response plots area (Fig. 5). Click Ok and
wait for the results.

5. Once the evaluation is completed, check the comparison between the

experimental relaxation test data and the numerical model calibrated by
Abaqus to match the test data. In the evaluation results, look at the Prony series
terms that will automatically be used by Abaqus (Fig.7).

Figure 5. Evaluation of viscoelastic properties of the Rubber material model.

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 Figure 6. Comparison between, numerical model and experimental test data.

Figure 7. Terms of Prony series used to model the Rubber time-dependent behaviour.

6. Close the viewport of the material evaluation and create a solid

homogeneous section referring to the material Rubber, by double-clicking
Sections in the model tree. Assign the Rubber section to the part called Seal.

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 4. Assembly and Step
1. Enter the assembly module and look at the instances already pre-assembled
(Fig. 8).

Figure 8. Assembly of the numerical model.

2. Enter the step module and create a static general step called Step-
Compression with duration of 1E-6s to compress the seal. Turn on the nlgeom
parameter and enter 1E-7s as initial increment size. The very small step size is
required since the *visco procedure uses the total time (not the step time) to
calculate the time-dependent properties of the material.
Create then a *Visco step called Step-relaxation, enter a time period of 50 s, 0.1
as initial increment size and 0.1 as viscolelastic strain error tolerance. This step
will calculate the stress relaxation of the seal in 50s. Viscoelastic properties are
only taken into account in the Visco, Couple temp-disp and Dynamic procedures.

3. Create a new History Output request, choosing the set called Set-RP as
region and RF2 as output variable. This output will monitor the time history of the
reaction force necessary to compress the seal.

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 5. Mesh
Enter the mesh module and mesh the part called Seal. Select 2 as global
element size. Mesh the part and make sure that the element type chosen is a
plane strain hybrid element for both quadrangular and triangular elements. Tick
in both tabs.

6. Interactions
Enter the Interaction module to create a mechanical interaction between the Seal
and the two rigid bodies.

1. Interaction Property. Click on the Create an Interaction Property icon in

the vertical toolbox and select Contact as Type in the opening dialog box. Select
Mechanical Normal Behaviour. Unselect the option Allow separation after
contact and Click OK.

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 2. Surface-to-Surface interaction. Create a new surface to surface interaction
during the Step-Compression between the seal and the upper rigid surface.
Select the previously defined surface called Master-1 as master surface and the
surface Slave-1 as slave surface. Use the button Surfaces in the lower message
bar to facilitate the surface selection. In the Edit Interaction dialog box, select
IntProp-1 as interaction property. Click OK.

3. Surface-to-Surface interaction. Repeat the same steps to define the contact

between the seal and lower rigid surface using Master-2 and Slave-2 as surfaces.

7. Boundary conditions

1. Create an encastre boundary condition.

In the initial step, create an encastre boundary condition using the set called Set-
ENC already created at the assembly level which constrains the lower rigid
surface.

2. Create a displacement boundary condition to the rigid surface

In the step called Step-Compression, create a displacement boundary condition
using the set called Set-DISP already created at the assembly level. Enter -25 as
displacement in direction-2 and 0 in the other fields.

3. Create a displacement boundary condition in the seal

In the step called Step-Compression, create a displacement boundary condition
using the set called Set-XDISP already created at the assembly level. Enter 0 as
displacement in direction-1 to constrain the horizontal rigid body motions of the
Seal. Click OK.

8. Job module
Enter the Job module and create a new Job called Stress-Relaxation. Submit
the job and monitor the convergence.

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 9. Results
1. In order to allow a better visualization of the stress field, extrude the 2D
elements into a 3D visualization. Go on View ODB Display Options. In the
Sweep/Extrude tab, enter a depth of 10 for both elements and the analytical
surfaces.

2. Show the contour map of the Von Mises stress field in the seal by clicking on
the Plot Contours icon. Animate the video.

3. Plot the time variation of the reaction force required to compress the seal
component. In the main menu, select Result History output. In the dialog box
select the entry that refers to the reaction force at the set called SET-RP and
press the button Plot.

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 Strategic Simulation & Analysis Ltd
Southill Barn, Southill Business Park, Cornbury Park, Charlbury, Oxfordshire, OX7 3EW
T. 01608 811777 F. 01608811770 E.info@ssanalysis.co.uk W. www.ssanalysis.co.uk 11