Calculation and validation of material tests with specimens made out of filled elastomers

In deep-drawing dies for steel sheet parts of car bodies huge masses are moved. To prevent vibrations, which occur by sudden acceleration or stopping of those masses, elastomeric tubular dampers [1] are used. The dampers are made out of carbon filled elastomers. A good knowledge about the material behaviour of metals is available. But for the numerical investigation of complete deep-drawing dies the elastomeric dampers must be taken into account, too. To characterize the material behaviour of the elastomers tensile tests and pressure tests were carried out. The received material data from the tests were read into LS-DYNA [2]. Simulation models of the tensile test and the pressure test were created for LS-DYNA according to the real dimensions and boundary conditions. For validation purposes, calculations of loading cycles were done to enable a comparison between test data and simulation results. For the calculations the implemented material model *MAT_SIMPLIFIED_RUBBER_WITH_DAMAGE (*MAT_183) was used. The comparison shows a good fitting between the test data and the calculation results with respect to the mechanical material behaviour by using this material model in single loading cases. The settings from the simulations of material tests were transferred to simulations of dampers, which are used in deep-drawing dies.