CREEP AND FRACTURE INITIATION IN FIBRE REINFORCED PLASTICS.

The author states that while most fibers used as a reinforcing constituent in polymer-based composites have reasonably simple deformation and fracture properties, the polymer matrices are anelastic and even non-linear viscoelastic with fracture properties that are strongly dependent on temperature, deformation rate, loading time, etc. The mechanical behavior is characterized as either fiber or matrix dominated, i. e. more or less determined by only one of the constituents.