soft polymers – Mechanics of Polymers

VUMAT for finite strain viscoelasticity

July 30, 2026 by admin

Together with my student Damien Ollion, we have converted the finite-strain viscoelastic UMAT originally developed with Florian Gouhier into a VUMAT for Abaqus/Explicit. The implementation reproduces the constitutive model of Reese and Govindjee (1998) for a generalized Maxwell model and includes the following features: A comprehensive How-to-use.pdf document is provided. It presents the constitutive equations, illustrates the...

All posts Current projects Data sharing

Abaqus finite strain Polymer Shape memory polymer soft polymers viscoelasticity

Impact of microstructure in the mechanical behavior of soft foams

July 29, 2026 by admin

Following our previous investigation of the beahvior of hyperelastic classic Voronoi closed-cell foams submitted to severe compression, we have extended the study to assess the influence of microstructure on the mechanical response of highly porous foams. To this end, two additional classes of microstructures were generated: mechanically grown Voronoi (M-Voro) closed-cell foams and open-cell foams...

All posts Current projects

foams Polymer soft polymers viscoelasticity

F.E. simulations of closed-cells foams under extreme compression

January 26, 2026 by admin

The mechanical response of isotropic elastomeric closed-cell foams with Classical Voronoi microstructures is examined through three-dimensional finite element simulations. The study focuses on finite-strain uniaxial compression, complemented by infinitesimal-strain shear and hydrostatic loading. Random foam geometries with porosities between 77% and 95% and narrow pore-size distributions were generated by subtracting irregular Voronoi polyhedra, constructed from...

All posts Current projects

finite element foams Polymer Porous materials soft polymers

Nonlinear behavior of a soft matrix highly filled with randomly spherical particle or voids

November 26, 2024 by admin

When highly reinforced a soft matrix, like an elastomer matrix, undergoes incredibly localized high strain where particles nearly touch. Therefore, it requires extensive remeshing efforts in an order to estimate numerically the equivalent homogeneous behavior of such a composite. We did that, using Abaqus *MAP SOLUTION option. This allowed to provide original numerical stress-strain responses...

All posts Past studies

Abaqus Filled elastomer homogenization nonlinear Porous remeshing soft polymers

Creep behavior of soft adhesives

April 27, 2023 by admin

Single-lap joint creep behaviour of two soft adhesives We have submitted two hot melt pressure sensitive adhesives (HMPSA) to bonded joint creep tests. While glassy state adhesives such as epoxys are often studied in the literature, data on soft adhesives that are in the rubbery state are scarce. These adhesives have applications such as sealing...

All posts Past studies

adhesives soft polymers viscoelasticity