Experimental Mechanics Applied to the Accelerated Characterization of Polymer Based Composite Materials

Creep rupture of polymer-matrix composites

“…agreed well with experimentally determined curves and medium term (103 minutes) test results [1,[3][4][5]. Therefore, the information given in…”

“…That viscoelastic properties are important for graphite/epoxy laminates has been previously demonstrated and reported [1]. This result is reproduced and shown in Figure 1 which indicates that a delayed viscoelastic fracture process was observed for a graphite/epoxy [±45°] 4s tensile specimen containing a circular hole.…”

“…An E 2 master curve* (item C) for the same material is shown in Figure 5. The TTSP methods used to obtain such master curves was reported previously [1,3]. Further, it was shown in earlier publications that the shift function (item C) was essentially independent of fiber angle and that master curves for arbitrary fiber angles predicted using the orthotropic transformation equation (item B)…”

“…A procedure for the accelerated characterization of graphite/ epoxy laminates was proposed by Brinson, Morris and Yeow [1]. The procedure which is shown in Figure 3 is based upon the well known time temperature superpositon principle (TTSP) for polymer materials and the widely used lamination theory for composite materials.…”

“…An alternate and much simpler approach was Fuggested in our earlier work [1]. This approach is based upon the key assumption that the stre r. ,th master curve of item G would have the same form as the modulus ma[';r curves of item E with the same shift function.…”