Modeling of viscoplastic cyclic loading behavior of polymers

A new theoretical approach, analyzed in previous works, is employed for the description of the nonlinear viscoelastic/viscoplastic response of high density polyethylene under tensile cyclic loading, experimentally studied elsewhere. The proposed analysis, developed for a 3-D problem, is applied for a uniaxial cyclic deformation, in a strain-controlled program, where tensile loading up to maximum strain is followed by unloading to zero stress. This procedure is repeated for ten cycles. The same model is also applied for the simulation of a stress-controlled program, where cyclic loading takes place between a and engineering stress. The hysteresis loops of both programs could be adequately captured, with a number of model parameters, related to both, nonlinear viscoelasticity and viscoplasticity. The simulated ratcheting strain as well as its evolution with number of cycles is a very good approximation of the experimental one. A systematic study of the values of the adjustable parameters has been performed in order to monitor the effect of every specific internal variable, responsible for either the nonlinear viscoelastic or viscoplastic path in the simulations. It was found that in the proposed analysis a rather low number of model parameters are required, compared to the works existing in the literature.