Investigation of damage evolution in short glass fibers reinforced polyamide 6,6 under tensile loading using infrared thermography

Abstract

Mechanical properties of polymers are very sensitive to environmental conditions in particular temperature. In the case of mechanical testing, thermomechanical coupling induce heat sources to be activated during the deformation and damage processes so that the temperature of the specimen may vary during testing. Depending on the characteristic temporal and spacial scales of the deformation and damage processes involved by the loading this temperature increase might be uniform or highly localized. The aim of the study is to investigate the temperature field evolution of glass fibers reinforced polyamide 6,6 with 0% (PA66GF00), 10% (PA66GF10), 20% (PA66GF20) and 30% (PA66GF30) glass fiber. In addition to infrared thermography, digital image correlation (DIC) was used to quantify deformation localization zones and correlate them to identified heat dissipation sources. Until necking, the heat distribution was found to be nearly homogeneous on PA66GF00 with a well marked thermoelastic region, succeeded by an homogeneous heat increase due to viscoplastic dissipation. Necking is associated to strong heat increase that is localized on the the necking area. The thermal response of short fiber reinforced materials was found to differ markedly from the uncharged one. Strong heterogeneity of the thermal was observed and was associated to localisation processes at different scales (investigated by DIC). The effect of the applied strain rate on the observed thermal heterogenities was investigated. In addition to DIC, the volume damage evolution was monitored using X-ray computed microtomography in particular region.

Mechanical properties of polymers are very sensitive to environmental conditions in particular temperature. In the case of mechanical testing, thermomechanical coupling induce heat sources to be activated during the deformation and damage processes so that the temperature of the specimen may vary during testing. Depending on the characteristic temporal and spacial scales of the deformation and damage processes involved by the loading this temperature increase might be uniform or highly localized. The aim of the study is to investigate the temperature field evolution of glass fibers reinforced polyamide 6,6 with 0% (PA66GF00), 10% (PA66GF10), 20% (PA66GF20) and 30% (PA66GF30) glass fiber. In addition to infrared thermography, digital image correlation (DIC) was used to quantify deformation localization zones and correlate them to identified heat dissipation sources. Until necking, the heat distribution was found to be nearly homogeneous on PA66GF00 with a well marked thermoelastic region, succeeded by an homogeneous heat increase due to viscoplastic dissipation. Necking is associated to strong heat increase that is localized on the the necking area. The thermal response of short fiber reinforced materials was found to differ markedly from the uncharged one. Strong heterogeneity of the thermal was observed and was associated to localisation processes at different scales (investigated by DIC). The effect of the applied strain rate on the observed thermal heterogenities was investigated. In addition to DIC, the volume damage evolution was monitored using X-ray computed microtomography in particular region.