Experimental study on the temperature effect and constitutive modeling of the tensile response of PC/ABS blend

Abstract

This study investigates the tensile properties of the PC/ABS blend under both small and large strains using experimental analysis and predictive analytical models. The influence of temperature and strain rate on the tensile response were evaluated, with strain rates reaching from 1.25 × 10⁻⁴ to 1.25 × 10⁻¹ s⁻¹ and temperatures ranging from 20 to 150 °C. The experimental results indicate that the tensile behavior of the material blend exhibits sensitivity to both strain rate and temperature. As the temperature rises, the yield strength and strain at failure decrease significantly; while, the young’s modulus only slightly decreases. Among several constitutive models studied, including the G’sell and Jonas and Duan–Saigal–Greif–Zimmerman (DSGZ) models, a modified version of the DSGZ model, referred to as the “Zhu et al.” model. However, this model struggled to accurately represent material behavior at elevated temperatures. To address this limitation, a new model named Hentati–Mnif–Hfaiedh–Petit (HMHP) was developed by introducing a temperature dependence into two key parameters of the “Zhu et al.” model. This improvement enabled the HMHP model to more accurately predict tensile behavior across a wide temperature range. The results confirm that the new developed model, HMHP provides a reliable prediction of tensile properties at different temperatures.