Analysis of the cyclic tensile behaviour of an elasto-viscoplastic polyamide

The present paper is concerned with the experimental and theoretical investigation of the progressive accumulation of inelastic deformation observed in cyclic tension tests performed on a particular polyamide. The elastic properties are not strongly affected by the strain rate, but the strain hardening induced by the plastic deformation is rate-dependent. Thus, the material behaviour is elasto-viscoplastic rather than viscoelastic or elasto-plastic. For the polymer studied in this paper, the kinematic hardening is much more significant than the isotropic hardening, and a negative plastic strain rate may occur even with a positive stress. The kinematic hardening is strongly dependent, not only on the accumulated plastic strain, but also on the loading rate. An elasto-viscoplastic mechanical model able to describe the cyclic inelastic behaviour for an arbitrary loading history is proposed. All parameters that arise in the theory are identified experimentally. The preliminary theoretical results concerning the modelling of cyclic load-unload tests are in good agreement with the experiments.