Application of activated barrier hopping theory to viscoplastic modeling of glassy polymers

YesAn established statistical mechanical theory of amorphous polymer deformation has been incorporated as a plastic mechanism into a constitutive model and applied to a range of polymer mechanical deformations. The temperature and rate dependence of the tensile yield of PVC, as reported in early studies, has been modeled to high levels of accuracy. Tensile experiments on PET reported here are analyzed similarly and good accuracy is also achieved. The frequently observed increase in the gradient of the plot of yield stress against logarithm of strain rate is an inherent feature of the constitutive model. The form of temperature dependence of the yield that is predicted by the model is found to give an accurate representation. The constitutive model is developed in two-dimensional form and implemented as a user-defined subroutine in the finite element package ABAQUS. This analysis is applied to the tensile experiments on PET, in some of which strain is localized in the form of shear bands and necks. These deformations are modeled with partial success, though adiabatic heating of the instability causes inaccuracies for this isothermal implementation of the model. The plastic mechanism has advantages over the Eyring process, is equally tractable,and presents no particular difficulties in implementation with finite elements.F. Boutenel acknowledges an Erasmus Programme Scholarshi

Compression of polypropylene across a wide range of strain rates

Three grades of polypropylene were tested in uniaxial compression at room temperature, across a wide range of strain rate: 10−4 s−1 to 104 s−1. One grade is a conventional polypropylene homopolymer. The two other grades are the polypropylene forming the matrix phase of a continuous glass fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite prepreg, with and without blending with a carbon-black master batch. Tests at the highest strain rates were performed using a compression split Hopkinson pressure bar. The test specimens, for all the three rates, were imaged using appropriate digital cameras in order to observe the deformation process. In addition, the images obtained were analysed digitally to obtain true strain measurements for the medium rates category. All three grades of polypropylene showed pronounced strain-rate dependence of compressive yield stress, increasing by factors of up to 4 across the range of rates. At the lowest rates, there was close agreement between the yield stresses for all three materials, and also close agreement with the Eyring theory. Considering the highest strain rates, however, yield stresses increased more rapidly with log(strain-rate) than would be expected from a linear Eyring prediction and values for the three materials diverged. This was attributed to the contributions made in each material by both alpha and beta relaxation processes. Also prominent in the medium- and high-rate experimental results was pronounced post-yield strain softening, greatest at the highest strain-rates. This resulted from a combination of thermal softening from adiabatic heating, and structural rejuvenation as often seen in glassy polymers in quasi-static tests