Abstract
Auxetic materials exhibit a negative Poisson’s ratio behavior that makes them useful for a variety of structural applications by virtue of their ability to counterintuitively deform due to a reentrant cellular structure. This property allows the cellular material to expand laterally when pulled in the longitudinal direction or, conversely, contract laterally when compressed, with the manner of deformation of the internal structure depending upon the configuration of the cellular structure. The purpose of this research was to develop carbon black nanoparticle-reinforced natural rubber vulcanizates and to investigate the effects of carbon black reinforcement on the mechanical behavior of an idealized auxetic foam structure using modeling and numerical simulation techniques. This has been achieved by mechanically characterizing vulcanized natural rubber of various nanoparticle loadings and then using the test data to perform finite element (FE) simulations on the foam models. Material models have been developed in the FE simulation software ANSYS by curve fitting experimental data (hyperelastic) to theoretical material models. Large deformation analysis of this foam structure has been carried out to determine structural reorganizations and negative Poisson’s ratio effect in the foam structure.
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