The delayed fracture test for viscoelastic elastomers

Abstract

In a recent contribution, Shrimali and Lopez-Pamies (2023) have shown that the Griffith criticality condition that governs crack growth in viscoelastic elastomers can be reduced -- from its ordinary form involving a historically elusive loading-history-dependent critical tearing energy $T_c$ -- to a fundamental form that involves exclusively the intrinsic fracture energy $G_c$ of the elastomer. The purpose of this paper is to make use of this fundamental form to explain one of the most distinctive fracture tests for viscoelastic elastomers, the so-called delayed fracture test.