Volume dilatation in a polycarbonate blend at varying strain rates

Impact loaded polymers show a variety of strain-rate dependent mechanical properties in their elastic, plastic and failure behaviour. In contrast to purely crystalline materials, the volume of polymeric materials can significantly change under irreversible deformations. In this paper, uni-axial tensile tests were performed in order to measure the dilatation in the Polycarbonate-Acrylnitril-Butadien-Styrol (PC-ABS) Bayblend T65. The accumulation of dilatation was measured at deformation speeds of 0.1 and 500 mm/s]. Instrumented with a pair of two high-speed cameras, volume segments in the samples were observed. The change in volume was quantified as relation between the deformed and initial volumes of the segments. It was observed that the measured dilatations are of great significance for the constitutive models. This is specifically demonstrated through comparisons of stress-strain relations derived from the two camera-perspectives with isochoric relations based on single-surface observations of the same experiments.