Prediction of viscoelastic behaviour of polymer matrix composites based on polymer matrix

Abstract

An effective micromechanics method of predicting the viscoelastic behaviour of polymer matrix composites based on a polymer matrix is presented. First, the Mori–Tanaka method is used to predict the elasticity properties of a unidirectional composite material from the matrix and reinforcement material. Then, the viscoelasticity of a layer in Laplace domain is obtained by the correspondence principle and the Laplace transform. The power law is used to model the polymer matrix's viscoelastic behaviour. Therefore, the inverse Laplace transformation can be used to obtain the viscoelasticity of a layer in the time domain. In the end, classic layer theories are adopted to predict the long-term viscoelastic properties of polymer matrix composites from a unidirectional composite material that is based on the viscoelastic properties of the polymer matrix. The mean relative deviation of the predicted results and experimental results for point 1 is 3·40% and for point 2 is 4·35% in 250 hours.

Keywords:

• Polymer matrix composites
• Viscoelastic
• Micromechanics
• Mori–Tanaka method
• The correspondence principle
• Laplace transforms
• Power law