Polymer‐based composite materials are widely used in applications subjected to a variety of loading types, including shock and impact loading in the range of hundreds of strain per second. The behaviour of composite laminates loaded at those rates is typically nonlinear and may involve rather large strains to failure. In the present study, the large‐deformation characteristics and constitutive representations of structural composites were investigated as functions of strain rate and temperature. A plain‐weave vinyl ester composite material was selected for the study. Tensile tests of off‐axis coupon specimens were conducted over several orders of strain rates and limited change of temperatures. A three‐parameter constitutive model was proposed to model the large‐deformation stress–strain relationship. The constitutive model was then used to predict the material response at different strain rates. The model predictions were verified by a different set of tests. The basic concepts and methodologies involved in reducing such data to constitutive equations that can be used in commercial computational codes to enable structural analysis in the presence of large‐strain progressive damage under dynamic loading is discussed.
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Reifsnider et al. (2007) studied this question.
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