Options in Mechanical Characterization of Engineering Thermoplastics for More Effective Material Modeling Practices

Despite their high volume of usage, polymers are barely a century old and as such are still a relatively new class of engineering materials. However, plastics are increasingly being used for load-bearing components in demanding thermal, mechanical, and chemical environments. Therefore, the engineering community has a high need to be able to analyze and predict the performance of these materials in order to design parts faster and more accurately. But proper engineering design requires both accurate mechanical properties to define material behavior and effective analysis techniques to predict part performance based on those data.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the current effectiveness of materials characterization technology to account for various loading conditions and processing/materials considerations as they relate to material modeling for use in structural analysis. Relatively simple techniques will be presented to interpret performance and compare material data obtained via standard industry testing procedures and then convert these data into a form that can be used directly in engineering analysis.