Modeling of viscoelasticity and damage in composite laminates by continuum thermodynamics

Time dependent analysis of fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites is essential if these materials are used in applications involving the effect of severe environmental conditions such as high temperature and humidity in addition to mechanical loading. The present research is focused on understanding and modeling the overall nonlinear viscoelastic response of polymer matrix composites incorporating the effects of distributed damage.; A constitutive framework incorporating the effect of high temperature and distributed damage is developed for polymer matrix composite laminates. The use of this framework for woven fabric composites is illustrated. The viscoelastic material response and the material properties under severe environmental conditions are studied both theoretically and experimentally. The approach uses continuum thermodynamics based formulation in which stress and temperature are allowed as independent variables along with the so-called hidden variables associated with viscous flow and internal variables representing damage. The damage variables incorporate time-dependent crack separation response as well crack surface orientation. The material coefficients in the polynomial expansion of the free energy are evaluated by a computational model. A user defined material subroutine is developed to include the nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive relations into ABAQUS finite element analysis package in computational study. A combined analytical and numerical procedure to determine the unknown constants in the theoretical model is also presented.; The effect of damage on the residual viscoelastic response of the material is studied by experiments to get a satisfactory and complete model. The effect of high temperature on the damage initiation and evolution is studied by microscopic observations of the undamaged and damaged specimen edges, which are exposed to high temperature. A systematic experimental procedure is followed to determine the critical temperature and stress levels for the damage initiation and viscoelastic response. Previously damaged specimens are subjected to instantaneous loading and unloading at different stress and different temperature levels to get creep-recovery strain data for model verification purposes. In all experiments the composite specimens are heated to required test temperature and then, temperature is kept constant.