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Characterization of the Transient Response of Polyurea

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Abstract

The strain-rate dependent tensile response of a transparent elastomer, polyurea, is determined at stretch-rates in the range of 800 to 8000 per second. This is accomplished by measuring the spatio-temporal evolution of the particle velocity and strain in a thin strip subjected to high speed impact loading that generates uniaxial stress conditions. The observed response is modeled using a modified viscoplastic constitutive relation.

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Notes

  1. In fact, there is never a truly linear region from which a proper elastic modulus can be extracted.

  2. In some later tests, the specimen was glued to the slider to prevent slippage.

  3. The transparency was influenced significantly by the mixing procedure; when the Versalink and Isonate were not mixed adequately, it resulted in an opaque, stiff polymer with a very small stretch to failure. By ensuring proper mixing with a stirrer, it was possible to obtain specimens that were transparent yellow in color.

  4. See the Supplementary Material of Niemczura and Ravi-Chandar, [15] for a video of the propagation of nonlinear elastic waves in a polyisoprene rubber. The wave propagation observed in the polyurea appears to be very similar.

  5. It should be noted that these plots result from taking derivatives of the position data; therefore there is an inherent error from numerical differentiation that has been smoothed by a moving average filter. Furthermore, the slider interacts frictionally with the guiding slots in the barrel and provides a nonuniform boundary condition at the attachment point.

  6. We have introduced a constant k in an effort to allow more flexibility in calibrating the measured response. The physical meaning of this is that the equilibrium response is somewhat stiffer than the quasi-static response. In this matter, we can only present a heuristic argument, since a detailed micromechanical model is not available. We suppose that the quasistatic response is attained only at extremely slow rates, when all possible configurations of the polymer chains can be sampled; in contrast, under the high strain-rate loading employed here, we conjecture that only some fraction of the possible configurations are sampled, naturally leading to a stiffer response.

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Acknowledgments

This work was performed under a program entitled “Dynamic Response of Metal-Polymer Bilayers - Viscoelasticity, Adhesion and Failure” sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR Grant Number N00014-09-1-0541, Program Manager: Dr. Roshdy Barsoum); this support is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Mechanics of Solids, Structures and Materials, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    A. B. Albrecht, K. M. Liechti & K. Ravi-Chandar

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  1. A. B. Albrecht
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  2. K. M. Liechti
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  3. K. Ravi-Chandar
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Correspondence to K. Ravi-Chandar.

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Albrecht, A.B., Liechti, K.M. & Ravi-Chandar, K. Characterization of the Transient Response of Polyurea. Exp Mech 53, 113–122 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11340-012-9663-8

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