Identification of moisture affected mechanical properties of polymer matrix materials by the employment of samples with moisture gradients

Abstract

The article explores the possibility to identify the moisture affected mechanical properties of polymer matrix materials by the employment of samples with moisture gradients. The identification is based on the use of a weakly coupled diffuso-mechanical model. A coupled tensile-bending test configuration is considered. It is shown that tensile and bending tests can be decoupled when the elastic properties of the matrix are polynomial functions of the moisture content. Tensile and bending tests in samples with moisture gradients are compared in terms of identification times, leading to a significant reduction of the identification time compared to moisture-saturated samples.

Keywords:

• Matrix materials
• Identification
• Diffuso-mechanical model
• Samples with moisture gradients
• Rayleigh–Ritz method

Acknowledgments

This work pertains to the French Government program “Investissements d’Avenir” (LABEX INTERACTIFS, reference ANR-11-LABX-0017-01). We acknowledge the support of the French Ministry of Education and Research for funding the PhD thesis of Anani Djato.