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Introduction
The physical testing of plastic materials for the purpose of defining material constitutive models in finite element
analysis can be very simple or incredibly complex depending on the objective of the analysis. Linear analysis of
structural parts is routinely performed using only a couple simple parameters. More complex analysis may involve
elevated temperatures, severe plastic deformation and strain rate sensitivity requiring customized material model
development and rigorous experimentation. The purpose of this discussion is to introduce laboratory experiments
that may be used to evaluate the physical properties defined in material constitutive models.
The tensile test is probably the most commonly used for plastics
because the desired state of strain is relatively straightforward to
achieve in modern tensile testers and the experiment provides valu-
able information.
The strain in the tensile test must be measured in the region of the
test specimen where the desired strain state is achieved. For the ten-
sion specimen, this is in the narrow section. Figure 3, An axial extensometer mounted on a tensile
specimen.
Strain
Figure 4, A typical plastic tensile stress strain curve. Figure 5, A tensile test to very high strain.
Figure 7, Transverse strain plotted as a function of axial strain. The initial low strain
slope is the Poisson's ratio.
ISO and ASTM methods have definitions for yield stress and yield strain. In one approach, the yield stress is the
stress at a strain offset from the initial tangent to the stress-strain curve. In another approach, the yield stress is the
first local stress maximum. While these values give us an indication of the stress and strain where the linear region
ends, the underlying assumption is that plastics have a distinct transition from elastic only behavior to elastic plus
plastic behavior. However, deviation from a linear stress strain curve could be the result of nonlinear elasticity, vis-
coelasticity, or plasticity. Unraveling this is impossible without additional information.
Load-unload to 0.006
Tensile Test 20
20 15
Stress
10
15 in
g
ad
5 Lo ng
di
oa
nl
Stress
10 Region of Interest 0
Viscoelastic Recovery
Strain
5
Figure 11, A load-unload experiment with a total
strain of 0.006.
0 Load-unload to 0.008
20
Strain
Stress
10
g
in
Figure 9, A typical plastic stress-strain curve with the yielding region of interest out- Lo
ad
5 ng
lined. oa
di
nl
U
0
Load-unload to 0.02
Viscoelastic Recovery
0.020 16
Figure 12, A load-unload experiment with a total
strain of 0.008.
14
Load-unload to 0.02
Strain
0.015 12
Stress
10 20
0.010 8
15
6 g
in
ad
Stress
0.005
strain still recovering 4 Lo ng
10 di
oa
nl
2 U
5
0.000 0 Residual Strain Point
-2 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 Viscoelastic Recovery
Strain
Figure 10, Load-unload experiments are used to determine the plastic strain contribu-
tion to total strain. The graph shows the loading and unloading at one max strain Figure 13, A load-unload experiment with a total
point. Several experiments like this are used to quantify the plastic strain as a function strain of 0.020.
of total strain so that yielding can be more precisely determined. 1
Plastic deformation may appear at very small strain values. A more accurate way to determine the yield point is by
unloading the specimen. This requires loading a series of virgin specimens to incrementally increasing strain levels. A
typical tensile stress-strain might look like Figure 9. Using some judgment, we might focus on the outlined region
of interest to examine the yielding behavior. If we load a new test specimen as in Figure 9 but stop at a set total
strain followed by a quick removal of the stress on the specimen, we can observe the subsequent strain recovery.
The strain recovery consists of an initial quick elastic recovery followed by a slower viscoelastic recovery as shown in
Figure 10. After a reasonable time, we may define the residual strain in the specimen as plastic strain resulting from
the particular total strain. If we repeat this procedure at multiple total strain values on new specimens as shown in
Figures 11-13, we can construct a graph of residual strain as a function of total strain. (Figure 14) In this particular
test sequence, one might conclude that the onset of plastic yielding begins at approximately 0.006. Other materials
may not exhibit a distinct transition and it may be a more complex task to analytically describe the behavior.
0.0018
Strain Recovery Summary
0.0016 Tension
0.0014
Residual Strain
0.0012
0.0010
0.0008
0.0006
0.0004
0.0002
0.0000
-0.0002
0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030
Applied Strain
Figure 15, Localized
Figure 14, The graph shows the residual strain as a function of total strain collected yielding or necking in
from a series of experiments on new tensile specimens. the tensile specimen-
making it difficult
to understand the
distribution of stress
and strain in the test
specimen.
Sometimes, when plastic is stretched beyond a given strain, incremental straining becomes very localized resulting in
a local narrowing of the test specimen. (Figure 10). This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “necking”. This is
a complex material behavior and there is no longer a simple tension state throughout the test specimen. Generating
a material model to adequately describe this behavior is an advanced modeling idea and is generally not supported
in basic material libraries. However, there are modeling techniques typically involving optimizing software that start
with a specimen geometry and using the force displacement information along with the basic strain information, a
material model that describes the macro behavior in the material generated with reasonable success.
Thermal Expansion
quantitative information across a broad range of temperatures.
Slope B
Non-ambient properties
Temperature
Figure 17, Thermal expansion as a function of tem-
perature. The slope (CTE) over a large temperature
ranges may change significantly.
Tensile
at 5°C
Stress
at 23°C
at 75°C
at 110°C
Short term creep and long term creep are both important material
properties. Short term creep measurements are typically made at
stresses resulting in small strains in the material such that plastic
deformations do not significantly enter into the measurement.
These experiments typically last less than two hours over which
several decades of time may be captured.
Tension Creep
at 5 MPa
Strain
at 23°C
at 1 MPa
at 50°C
Time
Strain
at 80°C
Time
Figure 22, Short term creep at 3 temperatures.
The rate or speed at which a stress is applied to plastic will alter the
response of the material. At slow speeds, most plastics will stretch
farther before failure and will yield at lower stress values than if the
stress is applied quickly. This effect becomes measurable with order
of magnitude rate changes (Figure 24).
Testing at slow speed requires very stable strain and force mea-
surement in addition to careful control of temperature. Testing at
automotive crash strain rates requires specialized loading systems,
customized strain and force measuring as well as high speed data
collection systems (Figure 23).
Strain
Figure 24, Plastic tensile stress strain data at decade increments of strain rate.
Digital image correlation is used to measure strain. In this experiment the region of interest is a narrow region
between the notches. This is where the stress is intentionally localized to create a pure shearing condition. The
strain must be measured in the region of the test specimen where the desired strain state is achieved. For very rigid
materials users have bonded strain gages. In this case, an optical surface strain measurement technique is used. To
do this, a speckle pattern is painted onto the specimen surface and a small region is identified and the shear strain is
measured using digital image correlation. The system used at Axel Products is the Vic 3D Gage system produced by
Correlated Solutions, LLC. The system allows the identification of a small region on the test specimen to be used.
Furthermore, the calculated shear strain can
be output as a continuous analog signal
during the experiment. This provides the
23C
ability to use the shear strain to trigger the
Shear Stress
The objective of the testing described herein is to examine the long-term straining in a plastic material subjected to
a constant stress. These experiments are often performed at elevated temperatures and the data is sometimes used to
predict material behavior beyond the time frame of the actual experiment. Plastics are generally considered to creep
more than metals at similar temperatures making it critical to understanding this vulnerability in metal replacement
applications.
While these experiments are easily described by the duration of the experiment, there are significant practical
considerations in the design of the experiments. While it is reasonable and cost effective to use a universal tensile
tester such as an Instron to perform short term creep experiments, it is prohibitively expensive to engage these
instruments for long periods to perform long term experiments. As such, long term creep experimental test stands
tend to be lower cost systems constructed using dead weights to apply the desired creep stresses.
Long-term creep experiments are typically performed in tension. A “dogbone” style tensile specimen is used.
At Axel Products, these experiments are performed using individual fixtures mounted in individual test frames.
Individual test frames are considered necessary to eliminate interaction between experiments.
The compression state is probably the second most commonly used because the desired state
of strain is thought to be relatively straightforward to achieve. Actually, compression tests
are somewhat difficult to perform.
The experiment is generally performed by placing a right cylinder of the subject material
between two flatten flat platens and compressing it. The initial stiffness and sometimes
a yielding point may be derived from the resulting stress strain curve. Some plastics may
behave differently in compression than in tension so that the additional information may be
valuable.
The compression experiment suffers from a couple of disadvantages. The first is that the
presence of friction between the material and the platen will restrain the specimen from lat-
erally expanding causing unknown shear stresses. Secondly, the specimen is likely to buckle Figure 30, Compres-
sion platens with
or at least distort at some point creating an unknown state of strain. Because the forces in a capacitive strain
compression experiment may be high relative to the stiffness of the test frame and load cell, sensor.
direct measurement of strain at the platens is usually required (Figure 30).
Bend tests
Application and analysis objectives drive the material model and the testing program. It is
impractical to test and model all of the properties of plastic. Testing with appropriate strain
measurement at the correct temperatures and rates can provide much of the information
needed to develop material models.
References:
2. Peeyush Bhargava and Alan T. Zehnder, “High temperature shear strength of T650-35 /
HFPE-II-52 polyimide matrix unidirectional composite,” Experimental Mechanics, 46, pp.
245-255, (2006)
4. Totry, Essam and González, Carlos and & Llorca, Javier, “An Experimental and
Numerical Analysis of the V-notched Rail Shear Test to Measure the Shear Properties
of Fiber-Reinforced Polymers,” CompTest2008, October, 2008, University of Dayton,
Dayton, USA