The Effects of Stress Triaxiality on the Neck Initiation and Fracture of High-density Polyethylene (HDPE)

Abstract

This study analyses the tensile mechanical behaviour and deformation of neck i.e localization initiation, propagation and fracture of injection-moulded polymer composed of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) as a function of initial stress triaxiality. Three different specimen geometries namely i) Simple tension, ii) Plane strain and iii) Shear specimens were punched from injection-moulded HDPE plates and tested experimentally in uniaxial tension to introduce different stress triaxialities. These specimen geometries used are standard for the material characterization of sheet metals. However, for plate polymer materials such specimen geometries have not comprehensively been studied earlier. Standard shear specimen geometry has been further optimized in this work using finite element models to restrict unwanted out-of-plane deformations arising at large deformation. The digital image correlation (DIC) technique is used to acquire the full field deformation and in particular the localized strains in the neck region of the specimens. Based on the major-minor strain paths from DIC-measurements stress triaxiality has been calculated. It is challenging to follow the stochastic pattern at larger local strain in DIC and hence the strain at failure has been measured using orthogonal grid lines on the specimen surface. Finally, strains at neck-initiation and failure at three different stress triaxialities are reported for injection-moulded HDPE in two material orientations. It is observed that within the elastic limit the stress triaxialities obtained from the experimental tests were close to the ideal values found in the literature and neck-initiation strain is strongly dependent on the stress triaxiality. However, as neck initiates and propagates, the triaxialities for all geometries shift closer to the measured value in a simple tension specimen i.e. 0.33 limiting the effect of the initial triaxiality on failure strain.