Modeling the rheology of thixotropic elasto-visco-plastic materials

To describe the macroscopic rheological behavior of thixotropic elasto-visco-plastic (TEVP) materials, phenomena that take place in their microstructure must be accounted for. To this end, we couple the tensorial constitutive model by Saramito for EVP materials with thixotropy, extending the ideas of isotropic hardening, and with kinematic hardening (KH), to account for back stresses. We use a scalar variable that describes the level of structure at any instance and a modified Armstrong-Frederick KH equation, thus providing rules governing the dynamics of the apparent yield stress. The material viscosity, yield stress, and back stress modulus feature a nonlinear dependence on the structural parameter, enabling the model to make accurate predictions with a single structural parameter. To avoid unphysical stress evolution in both shear and extensional flows, we propose a modified back stress constitutive equation that keeps the components of the stress tensor bounded. The predictions of the new model are compared to experimental data and predictions of previously proposed TEVP models in simple rheometric flows, including steady and step-shear tests, flow reversal, intermittent step tests, small amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS) and large amplitude oscillatory shear. In most cases, the proposed model reproduces more accurately these experimental data than the other models, highlighting its predictive capabilities. Moreover, SAOS illustrates that introducing viscoplasticity via the Saramito model necessarily reduces G '' to zero in the linear strain regime. This calls for model adjustments in the solid state. Finally, we examined the proposed model in uniaxial elongation and concluded that it is important to include this flow in the rheological characterization and modeling of such systems. (C) 2019 The Society of Rheology.