The short and long term properties of a liquid crystalline polymer at elevated temperatures: Characterization and modeling

Tensile and short term (24 h) creep tests were performed on Xydar G930, a liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) with 30 wt.% glass filler, at temperatures and stress levels ranging from room temperature to 175°C and 0.3 fraction ultimate tensile strength (UTS) to 0.8 fraction UTS, respectively. Temperature was found to have an affect on the short term tensile properties. The resulting strain vs time creep curves showed the expected dependence of creep strain on temperature and stress level. Creep compliance curves were derived from the creep curves and showed distinctively nonlinear viscoelastic behavior at all stress levels and temperatures. Creep compliance was found to follow a power law in time. The power law was used to model the stress dependence of creep and the Arrhenius equation was employed to model the temperature dependence up to 120°C. A significant reduction in creep resistance was observed at 175°C. Time-temperature-stress-superposition was used to show that the material followed power law behavior up to 1000 h.