Viscoelastic material behaviour of PBT-GF30 under thermo-mechanical cyclic loading

✍ Scribed by M. Pierantoni; M. De Monte; D. Papathanassiou; N. De Rossi; M. Quaresimin

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 331 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1877-7058
• DOI: 10.1016/j.proeng.2011.04.354

✦ Synopsis

This paper deals with the simulation of the behaviour of a short glass fibre reinforced polybutylene terephthalate (PBT-GF30) under thermo-mechanical cyclic loading. Thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF) tests, consisting of thermal cycling with a superimposed constant strain, have been carried out in the temperature ranges of -40°C to 120°C and -40°C to 40°C, applying different mean strain values. The main goal of the work is to model the stress trend during TMF cycles and assess the performance of a linear viscoelastic material model. A linear viscoelastic model has been implemented in ABAQUS 6.9-1 by means of Prony series, using the UTRS subroutine to model the time-temperature shift. The stress-time trend during TMF tests is discussed, comparing the simulated versus the experimental stress results. In particular, the maximum and minimum values within each cycle are considered, in order to evaluate the performance of the material model. Linear viscoelastic simulations show good agreement between experimental tests and FE analysis, both for plain and notched specimens.