Investigation of temperature-dependent mechanical behaviours of polycarbonate with an innovative fractional order model

Amorphous thermoplastic polymers are considered as essential engineering materials. However, their strongly temperature-dependent elastic-viscoplastic behaviour is still not well understood. The large deformation response of these materials in the temperature range spanning the glass transition temperature is highly required. In this paper, the uniaxial compression tests are performed with large deformation on a polycarbonate amorphous polymer, within a forming temperature range from 60 °C to 180 °C. The variable order fractional constitutive model is improved to describe the evolution of mechanical behaviour of polycarbonate at different temperatures. The fractional order in the model is proposed as a function of time. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data. It is concluded that the variable order fractional model is an efficient tool to predict the large deformation of amorphous polymers under different temperatures.