Relationships between failure and other time dependent processes in polymeric materials

The authors outline results obtained in their laboratory showing the correlations and relationships observed between the failure behavior of polymeric glasses and other time dependent processes in these materials, e.g. physical aging and nonlinear visco elasticity. A review is presented of earlier work in which cumulative damage rules were used to describe fatigue failure behavior. This discussion is followed by consideration of the relationship between creep and creep rupture in PMMA. Finally the authors show how physical aging impacts the creep and failure of a PMMA glass and the fracture toughness of a network polymeric glass. From the results it was found that, not only did the time-stress correspondence described previously hold for each set of samples, but the strain at failure was also approximately the same.