Assessment of Polymer Material Evolution Under Large Deformation Using Virtual Field Method
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This study presents an application of the Virtual Field Method (VFM) for the characterization of polymer materials subjected to nonhomogeneous deformation. Hyperelastic parameters are identified for the as-received material. A novel T-shaped specimen is proposed to induce strain heterogeneity from the onset of deformation. A custom VFM implementation was developed by extending the Thermocorr software. To address the large deformation regime, a dedicated numerical integration scheme based on Voronoi cells was introduced for the virtual field equations. The accuracy of the proposed methodology was assessed through finite element simulations using Abaqus. Experimental results obtained via digital image correlation (DIC) demonstrate good accuracy in the identification of the material parameters, confirming the reliability of the proposed approach.
