TY  - INPR
TI  - Thermomechanical characterisation and plane stress linear viscoelastic modelling of ethylene-tetra-fluoroethylene foils
Y1  - 2024/08/28/
AV  - public
N2  - Ethylene-tetra-fluoroethylene (ETFE) is a polymer employed in tension membrane structures with mechanical properties that strongly depend on time and temperature effects. A comprehensive understanding of the mutual influence of these variables and a unified viscoelastic constitutive model design can enable wider exploitation of ETFE in sustainable lightweight construction. This study presents a thermomechanical characterisation of ETFE foils through quasi-static tensile experiments spanning two orders of magnitude of strain rates, creep, relaxation, shear and dynamic cyclic tests in a wide range of temperatures suitable for building applications, from -20 Celsius degrees to 60 Celsius degrees. The experimental results in different material orientations are used to identify the limits of the linear viscoelastic domain, define the direction-dependent creep compliance master curves and calibrate the parameters of a plane stress orthotropic linear viscoelastic model, employing the Boltzmann superposition and the time-temperature superposition principles. The model has been numerically implemented using a recursive integration algorithm and its code is provided open source. A validation on independently acquired data shows the accuracy of the constitutive model in predicting ETFE behaviour within the linear viscoelastic regime usually adopted during structural design, with excellent extrapolation capabilities outside the range of the calibration data.
ID  - discovery10196705
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11043-024-09704-5
EP  - 28
N1  - © 2024 Springer Nature. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
KW  - Lightweight materials
KW  -  Membrane structures
KW  -  Viscoelasticity
KW  -  Polymers
KW  -  Time-temperature superposition principle
KW  -  Thin films
PB  - SPRINGER
JF  - Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials
A1  - Comitti, Alessandro
A1  - Bosi, Federico
ER  -