Effects of thermo-mechanical coupling in a plastic cylinder

The paper describes results from numerical experiments on the effects of thermomechanical coupling in a polypropylene homopolymer plastic cylinder of infinite length. The specimen is subjected to cyclic straining of fixed amplitude and cycle time. Thermal boundary conditions, in which convective heat loss only is considered, cover the full range of boundaries, from the ideally thermally insulated to the ideally convective case. The temperature change distributions obtained from the model are in accordance with expected behaviour and are quanlitatively confirmed by preliminary industrial tests.