Why Rubber Is Hard to Model Accurately
Rubber behaves very differently from most engineering materials. It is nearly incompressible, its stress strain response is highly nonlinear, and it can exhibit hysteresis, damage, creep, and stress relaxation depending on loading history and temperature. Getting a rubber material model wrong does not just introduce a small error, it can produce results that are qualitatively misleading. Abaqus offers a broad set of material models specifically built to capture this behavior, but choosing the right one, and calibrating it correctly, depends heavily on the test data available.

Webinar Scope
In this online training, 4RealSim will walk through how to model solid rubber and rubber foams in Abaqus, from the underlying material behavior to selecting and calibrating an appropriate hyperelastic or viscoelastic model. Participants will learn how test data availability drives model choice, how to account for time and temperature dependent effects, and how Abaqus tools support material calibration directly from test data.

Topics Covered

• Why rubber behaves the way it does: cross linking, near incompressibility, hysteresis, and damage

• Hyperelasticity fundamentals and strain energy density functions

• Choosing between Neo-Hookean, Yeoh, Marlow, Ogden, and other hyperelastic models based on available test data

• Modes of deformation: uniaxial, planar, and equiaxial testing, and why one is not enough

• Modelling rubber foams and their distinct compressibility behavior

• Viscoelastic effects: creep, stress relaxation, hysteresis, and damping

• Linear and nonlinear viscoelasticity, and Prony series representation

• Time temperature correspondence and the WLF shift function

• Material model calibration in Abaqus/CAE and the Material Calibration App

Who Should Attend?

• Simulation engineers modelling rubber, elastomer, or foam components

• Analysts working on seals, gaskets, bushings, mounts, or tires

• Engineers with test data who need to select and calibrate the right material model

• Anyone whose rubber simulation results have not matched physical test behavior

Prerequisite

• 4RealSim Abaqus customer