Tensile Creep and Deformation Modeling of Vinyl Ester Polymer and Its Nanocomposite

This article discusses tensile creep behavior of vinyl ester polymer and its nanocomposite with 0.5 wt% functionalized carbon nanofibers. It is shown that for a constant temperature the creep resistance decreases with increasing stress. At lower temperature, higher creep compliance was observed for vinyl ester as compared to nanocomposite, while at temperatures close to T g of vinyl ester creep compliance in nanocomposite was higher than that for vinyl ester. An analytical power-law relationship was used to predict the creep deformation behavior of both vinyl ester and its nanocomposite which showed good prediction of creep strain versus time, especially at lower temperatures and for lower applied stresses. A three-parameter Findley-type creep law for the compliance was also used. Good correlations between experimental data and the predictive model were obtained for both materials.