An embedded model of cord-reinforced rubber composites for aircraft tires

Aircraft tire is a typical cord-reinforced rubber composite, which consists of unidirectional linear elastic cords and isotropic hyperelastic rubber. The finite element analysis of cord-reinforced rubber composites causes volume-locking and inaccurate modeling due to the approximate incompressibility of the rubber and the complex lay-up of the cord, respectively. Therefore, an embedded model is proposed for finite element analysis of cord-reinforced rubber composites, which is applied to the inflation analysis of aircraft tire. Firstly, a modeling method of cord-reinforced rubber composites is established by embedding cords into rubber to eliminate the degrees of freedom of cords. Secondly, the unidirectional cords and the rubber are described by the linear-elastic and the Mooney–Rivlin hyperelastic constitutive models, respectively. Thirdly, based on the three-field variational principle, the finite element formulation of the cord-reinforced rubber composites is derived to consider the volume deformation of composites. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by specimen tensile and aircraft tire inflation examples.