A procedure for measuring biaxial viscoelastic behavior of thermoplastics

In order to accurately simulate the thermoforming or blowmolding manufacturing processes using finite elements or some other suitable computational procedure, it is necessary to know the constitutive behavior of the material being formed. In this study, an apparatus was developed to measure the large deformation behavior of thermoplastic sheet at elevated temperatures. The specifications of the test apparatus, as well as sample data measurements are presented. Biaxial viscoelastic material properities of ABS sheets were determined at forming temperatures. In particular, the nonlinear stress-strain relationship of the material was experimentally measured at various temperatures above the glass transition temperature and the data correlated to a time and strain separable viscoelastic material model. The results of this study show that it is possible to recover the underlying nonlinear elastic response of heated ABS sheet material, at finite strains, from tests exhibiting significant viscoelastic behavior.