Thermoplastics are widely used in many industries today. Products such as packaging solutions, consumer goods, medical devices, furniture, electronic devices and vehicles are constantly demanding more and more sophisticated polymer components. In addition, sustainability agendas at many companies today means a necessity to transition from high spec petroleum-based polymers to recycled and biobased alternatives [1]. This creates a pressure on the CAE departments to assess candidate resins at a high pace and make fact-based judgements on their predicted life cycle performance. In a competitive market, there are good reasons to adopt best practice for predicting the life cycle performance of these polymers already during the design phase with the use of realistic simulation.
Transport of raw materials in industrial applications usually involves highly abrasive processes and requires wear protection for a reliable, long operation period. At transfer points such as between conveyer belts additional impact loads can limit the lifetime. For such conditions rubber-ceramic hybrid materials can extend the lifetime multifold by combining the wear resistance of ceramics with the impact resistance of rubbers.
Energy management in passenger cars has traditionally been dominated by metal structures due to high energy demand and structural integrity. Due to changing legislation and increasing requirements, the trend in vehicle development is towards spatially distributed energy management concepts, leading to more and new load paths. Euro NCAP to frontal MPDB test is to be mentioned here. To serve these new load paths, new absorbers would actually be needed.
Viscoelasticity respectively the time-dependent and the recovery behavior plays an essential role, especially for polymers. Nowadays, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to make service life predictions and forecasts regarding the long-term behavior of components using simulation models. In this context, constant or cyclic loads are usually the decisive mechanisms for deformation. Moreover, the short-term behavior of plastics is also strongly characterized by viscoelastic phenomena. Even in the case of very short-time high loads on polymer components, the corresponding recovery behavior is of great importance and must be correctly represented in the simulation. Material and simulation models must take this long-term but also the short-term behavior into account for a realistic prediction of the deformation behavior in order to be able to make corresponding estimates of the service life of components, which is often designed for years. For this purpose, this behavior must be characterized in the application-specific framework and considered accordingly in the modeling. This article will present and compare some of the currently available material models that can account for the viscoelastic or time-dependent behavior of polymers, as well as the possibilities and effort required to obtain the material data needed for simulation.
Using MAT_ADD_INELASTICITY for Modelling of Polymeric Networks