Modeling creep in polymeric composites: Developing a general integrated procedure

• General integrated procedure for evaluating creep in polymeric composites is developed.
• Developed modeling required short-term experimental data on pure resin.
• Creep evolution is simulated based on gradual degradation of mechanical properties.
• The influence of geometrical variations arisen from creep phenomenon is investigated.

General integrated procedure for evaluating creep in polymeric composites is developed which is applicable to any arbitrary composite structures. Non-linear long-term creep phenomenon of composites is simulated on the basis of viscoelastic behavior of polymer. Limited short-term experimental measurements on pure resin are required to simulate creep evolution in composite laminates. The modeling procedure starts at lamina level and results are extended to the laminate level relying on incremental procedure. In each sub-step, the stress/strain distributions are updated in accordance with modified mechanical properties. Adaptive time step selection is developed to reduce required runtime for modeling procedure. The results of the theoretical creep evaluation are in a good agreement with available long-term experimental data for composite plates. A case study on cylindrical structure is also performed and obtained results are compared with published data. It is revealed that for the case of cylindrical structure taking into account variations of fiber orientations and cylinder radius arisen from creep evolution is of great importance.