Finite viscoplasticity of amorphous glassy polymers in the logarithmic strain space

The paper outlines a new constitutive model and experimental results of rate-dependent finite elastic–plastic behavior of amorphous glassy polymers. In contrast to existing kinematical approaches to finite viscoplasticity of glassy polymers, the formulation proposed is constructed in the logarithmic strain space and related to a six-dimensional plastic metric. Therefore, it a priori avoids difficulties concerning with the uniqueness of a plastic rotation. The constitutive framework consists of three major steps: (i) A geometric pre-processing defines a total and a plastic logarithmic strain measures determined from the current and plastic metrics, respectively. (ii) The constitutive model describes the stresses and the consistent moduli work-conjugate to the logarithmic strain measures in an analogous structure to the geometrically linear theory. (iii) A geometric post-processing maps the stresses and the algorithmic tangent moduli computed in the logarithmic strain space to their nominal, material or spatial counterparts in the finite deformation space. The analogy between the formulation of finite plasticity in the logarithmic strain space and the geometrically linear theory of plasticity makes this framework very attractive, in particular regarding the algorithmic implementation. The flow rule for viscoplastic strains in the logarithmic strain space is adopted from the celebrated double-kink theory. The post-yield kinematic hardening is modeled by different network models. Here, we compare the response of the eight chain model with the newly proposed non-affine micro-sphere model. Apart from the constitutive model, experimental results obtained from both the homogeneous compression and inhomogeneous tension tests on polycarbonate are presented. Besides the load–displacement data acquired from inhomogeneous experiments, quantitative three-dimensional optical measurements of the surface strain fields are carried out. With regard to these experimental data, the excellent predictive quality of the theory proposed is demonstrated by means of representative numerical simulations.