Thermo-mechanical properties of white oil and acrylic artist paints

Abstract

Abstract The mechanical properties of artist paints are affected by strain rate and temperature to varying degrees depending largely on the type of binder used in their formulation. Existing tensile data for these materials are typically given for a single strain rate, and do not fully characterise their time response. In order to expand on past research, the effect of strain rate on the modulus and failure properties of acrylic latex paints was recently reported using a series of uniaxial tensile tests to failure under different conditions of crosshead speed and temperature. The present investigation offers a comparison of the results from acrylics with new findings for traditional and modified oil media. To efficiently summarise mechanical data, the time-temperature superposition (TTS) principle was used to construct master-curves of secant modulus and failure strain as a function of strain rate. Comparisons are given between films tested within this study, and also with individual data points for oil paints obtained from literature. The findings highlight the differences between artist paint media over a broad time-scale, and practical temperature range. A simple estimate of dynamic failure criteria is also presented using a first order approximation.