Application of Full-Field Strain and Temperature Measurement and Analysis for Polymer Testing

Abstract

Recently, full field optical techniques are increasingly appreciated as deformation, strain and stress analysis tools. These new techniques offer high potential in the fields of material and component testing. On the laboratory test specimen level such non-contact methods may provide more accurate strain information over a large deformation range, as an important aspect in testing plastics and elastomers. Applying such systems several local effects associated with the contact methods may also be avoided. Moreover, the verification of numerical simulation of components exposed to mechanical loads requires proper test methods which provide both informations on global deformations as well as local deformations and strains along with their distribution. Furthermore, elastomer and thermoplastic test specimens and components may reveal temperature increase under complex loading conditions. While the high rate monotonic loading is associated with the adiabatic type heating, especially in the post yield deformation regime, due to the viscoelastic loss high frequency cyclic loading causes hysteretic type heating in the linear and non-linear viscoelastic deformation range. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to verify the applicability of non-contact full-field strain and temperature analysis methods to polymer testing.