Non-linear thermoelasticity with energy limiters

•Thermoelasticity is coupled with a description of material failure.•Energy limiters are used to describe material failure via constitutive equations.•The theory predicts the existence of the thermoelastic inversion point observed in experiments.•Besides, it predicts the experimentally observed stiffening of rubberlike materials under heating.•It is found that the tensile strength increases while the critical rupture stretch is almost unaffected by heating.

In this article we couple the previously developed theory of elasticity with energy limiters for modeling material failure with a description of thermal processes. We present a generalized formulation of the thermoelasticity with energy limiters. We illustrate the new theory via the analytically tractable example of uniaxial tension. The theory predicts the existence of the thermoelastic inversion point observed in experiments. Besides, it predicts the experimentally observed stiffening of rubberlike materials under heating. We find above all that the tensile strength increases as a result of the stiffening while the critical rupture stretch is almost unaffected by heating. It is hoped that the developed coupled theory can be useful for modeling failure in rubberlike solids.