Experimental investigation and modeling of the mechanical behavior of PC/ABS during monotonic and cyclic loading

The purpose of this work is to characterize the mechanical behavior of blends of polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) during monotonic and cyclic loading. Compression experiments were performed using a SHIMADZU universal testing machine (10−4 to 10−2 s−1) and a split Hopkinson pressure bar (1600-5000 s−1), with, the test temperatures ranging from 293 to 353 K. The influence of the rate and temperature on the deformation of PC/ABS is discussed in detail. Based on the investigation of numerous constitutive models, a phenomenological model called DSGZ was chosen to describe the compression behavior of PC/ABS. This model could not accurately reproduce the deformation of polymers at high strain rates when utilizing the same material coefficients for the low and high strain-rate deformations. In addition, this model was unable to capture the deformation features during unloading and subsequent reloading when adopting the original stress-strain updating algorithm. Hence, some improvements to the model have been implemented to better predict the deformation. Finally, the model predictions are shown to be consistent with the experimental results.