Modeling the Constitutive Behaviour of PET for Stretch Blow Moulding

Abstract

There are a substantial amount of constitutive models that have been developed to capture the finite deformation behavior of polymers for forming simulations. Most of these models have been used to capture the behavior in uniaxial and simultaneous biaxial modes of deformation. However, very few have attempted to model the sequential biaxial deformation behavior which is more appropriate for the stretch blow moulding process. The aim of this work is to develop a model for PET to successfully capture the sequential stress‐strain behavior as a function of temperature and strain rate, thus making it suitable for use in simulations of stretch blow moulding. Biaxial test data has been generated at temperatures and strain rates appropriate for stretch blow moulding and a model developed by Buckley et al. has been implemented within the commercial finite element package Abaqus/Explicit. In parallel, an efficient automatic curve fitting procedure has been developed to enable the material parameters to be easily found from biaxial test data. The results show that the Buckley model can predict the stress response of equibiaxial deformation well, but cannot predict the sequential biaxial deformation.