The Effect of Thermal Residual Stress on the Stress State in a Short-Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic

Abstract Upon their cooling and solidification, significant thermal residual stresses can develop in short-fiber reinforced thermoplastics due to the mismatch in coefficient of thermal expansion between fiber and matrix. In this study we set out to investigate this effect numerically. The build-up of thermal residual stresses is modeled by expanding a well-established constitutive model, the Eindhoven glassy polymer (EGP) model, with thermal expansion. The experimentally measured thermal residual stresses can be described using an effective glass-transition temperature and a constant coefficient of thermal expansion without the need for complex equilibrium kinetics associated with the glass transition itself. Subsequently, the influence of thermal residual stress on the deformation behavior for a short-fiber reinforced thermoplastic is studied employing multi-fiber representative volume elements (RVEs) for different fiber-weight fractions. The micromechanical models are evaluated on the importance of thermal residual stresses on the local and nominal stress state. From these analyses it can be concluded that the thermal residual stresses should be accounted for when assessing the quantitative local stress state and are therefore essential when local mechanisms are studied. In contrast, thermal residual stresses are not required to capture the nominal transient stress–strain response.