Natural rubber is well-known for its excellent mechanical properties in multiaxial fatigue and those are generaly attributed to the ability of the material to crystallize when strained. However, the relationship between strain-induced crystallization and mechanical properties of natural rubber has never been established. The aim of this thesis is therefore to understand the origin of the great multiaxial fatigue properties of carbon black-filled natural rubber, by considering two small scales of study, as opposed to the macroscopic scale generally considered. The first part of this thesis is dedicated to uniaxial crack growth and energy dissipation mechanisms at the cracks and micro-cracks scale ; those mechanisms are determined thanks to original in-situ propagation tests observed with scanning electron microscope. In the second part of the thesis, strain-induced crystallization is studied at the macromolecular scale, in static multaxial deformation on the one hand and in uniaxial fatigue on the other hand, thanks to X-ray diffraction measurements performed at the Soleil synchrotron facility. The characteristics of crystallites, i.e. their size, orientation, number and lattice parameters, are measured during the different mechanical tests. We observe that in multiaxial deformation, the crystallites are similar in size and have the samei lattice parameters than those nucleated in uniaxial deformation, but their orientation strongly varies with the multiaxiality of the deformation and is not influenced by the loading path. Finally, we show that in uniaxial fatigue, the characteristics of the crystallites evolve with the number of cycles, differently depending on the minimum and maximium stretch ratios reached at each cycle.
Strain-induced crystallization of natural rubber in fatigue and multiaxial deformation