Dynamic mechanical analysis of pure and fiber‐reinforced thermoset‐ and thermoplastic‐based polymers and free volume‐based viscoelastic modeling

Abstract

Fiber‐reinforced polymer composites have gained significant importance in engineering applications and are widely used as structural components. The optimal choice of combinations of the type of polymer matrix and the fiber content depend on the required applications. In view of this, polypropylene (PP), a thermoplastic, reinforced with 30 wt.% of short glass fibers (PP‐GF30) is considered for this study. Additionally, a rather new composite system based on unsaturated polyester‐polyurethane hybrid resin (UPPH) is introduced. This thermoset‐based material is reinforced with 41 wt.% of long discontinuous glass fibers (UPPH‐GF41). Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) is performed on the pure polymer and the composite samples to experimentally characterize the temperature‐ and frequency‐dependent material behavior. It is observed that the stiffness of the materials is highly temperature‐dependent. PP exhibits a nonlinear viscoelastic behavior in the temperature range of possible applications whereas the UPPH material shows a less pronounced behavior. The resulting experimental data not only give general information on the material behavior of the composite subjected to a temperature and frequency load but also provide input as well as validation data for the developed material modeling methods. In an industrial environment, homogenized elastic material properties are desirable for analysis of the structural components at room temperature conditions. A mean field homogenization method is introduced to estimate the effective elastic material properties on a macroscopic scale. This method is formulated explicitly in terms of orientation tensors of second‐ and fourth‐order, describing quantitatively the microstructure of the corresponding composite. Additionally, the thermoviscoelastic material behavior for the considered temperature range is modeled by the free volume concept. In this context, the material parameters for the pure PP and UPPH material are identified. The calculated simulation results are compared with the experimental data entailing good agreements.