Creep in unidirectionally reinforced polymer composites

Conclusions We have explored here the possibilities of predicting the permanent creep in unidirectionally reinforced polymer composite materials from the results of accelerated testing of their components. The mutually independent components of the viscoelastic compliance tensor under conditions of creep have been calculated with the aid of the Laplace transformation and an earlier verified variant of determining the mean elastic characteristics of a composite material, whereupon the originals of the sought functions have been obtained by a numerical inverse Laplace transformation. Experiments were performed with unidirectionally reinforced materials, a glass-plastic, an organoplastic, a carbon-plastic, and a boroplastic, all tested in tension in the direction of fiber reinforcement and in the transverse direction, also in longitudinal shear. The possibilities of predicting the creep in composite materials with the aid of functions characterizing the viscoelastic compliance of the binder and obtained by the method of temperature-time analogy have been confirmed twofold: by long-duration (up to 3 yr) control tests performed on the given materials and by control calculation of the creep in these composite materials from results of direct long-duration (up to 5 yr) tests performed on specimens of the binder.Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, No. 2, pp. 215–223, March–April, 1984.