A multiscale model for anisotropic damage and hysteresis in biodegradable polymers

Abstract. Predicting the mechanical response of biological soft materials requires an understanding of the complex phenomena characterizing their microscale. In this work, we use an existing versatile framework, based on assumptions on the statistical distribution of biolpolymers at the network scale, for extending our previous entropic constitutive model of Worm-Like Chains networks to different deformation classes. Furthermore, we include the effect of molecules topological constraints by introducing an energy term depending on the second invariant of the Green-Cauchy tensor. In this way we are able to qualitatively reproduce, with a limited set of physically meaningful constitutive parameters, a range of observed phenomena such as induced anisotropy, stress softening, hardening, Mullins effect, evolution of permanent stretches.