Physical aging effect on viscoelastic behavior of polymers

Abstract

The effect of physical aging on the viscoelastic (VE) behavior of epoxy resin is investigated experimentally performing strain-controlled tests at various temperatures on specimens aged at different temperatures (TA) for different times (tA). The aging effect is analyzed using as a framework Schapery's type of thermo-aging-rheologically simple (T-A-R simple) VE model that contains aging-state and test-temperature dependent shift factor. Experiments show that in first approximation, the shift factor can be presented as the product of aging related shift factor aA and temperature related factor aT. It is found that for short aging times the change rate of the aging shift factor with tA does not depend on TA, whereas for long tA at high TA the rate increases. Shift factors alone are not able to explain differences in relaxation curves for almost “fully” aged specimens aged at different high TA, It is shown that a T-A-R complex VE model with two additional aging-dependent functions can describe the observed discrepancies.

Keywords

• Physical aging
• Viscoelasticity
• Shift factors
• Numerical analysis