High Strain-Rate Tensile Experiment on Polycarbonate Bar

To understand the strain rate effect on the tensile behavior of polycarbonate bar,high strain-rate and quasi-static loading unilateral tension tests were carried out using rotating disc bar-bar tensile impact apparatus and MTS809 material testing system.Engineering stress-engineering strain curves were obtained at strain rates of 380,800,1750,0.001 and 0.05 s-1 respectively.Experimental results show that the effect of strain rate on tensile properties of polycarbonate is apparent.The values of yield stress and unstable strain increases with strain rate increasing.The ZWT constitutive model was used to describe the nonlinear tensile behavior of polycarbonate bar subjected to quasi-static and high rate loading.Comparison between the model results and the experimental data indicates that the ZWT model can well characterize the stress-strain responses of polycarbonate within the rate range investigated in present paper.