Creep failure of polypropylene: experiments and constitutive modeling

Observations are reported on isotactic polypropylene in uniaxial tensile tests with various strain rates, relaxation tests with various strains, and creep tests with various stresses at ambient temperature. Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic–viscoplastic responses and damage of a semicrystalline polymer at three-dimensional deformations. Adjustable parameters in the stress–strain relations are found by fitting the experimental data. The model is applied to predict creep-failure diagrams in the entire interval of stresses. A phenomenological approach is proposed to determine a knee stress, at which transition occurs from ductile to brittle rupture. Accuracy of this method is evaluated by numerical simulation.