Study on Constitutive Modeling for Large Deformation Behavior of Polyethylene Considering Strain Rate Effect

Polyethylene (PE) pipes have been applied in transportation of key energy medium such as natural gas in the past decades. The mechanical property of PE is of great importance for better design and safer application of PE pipeline system. The large deformation behavior is a key character of PE, not only for its significant strain rate sensitivity, but also for localized necking process after yielding. In this paper, a new constitutive modeling method was proposed to charaterize the rate-denpendent large deformation behavior of PE, in which the true stress is regarded as a function of true stain and true strain rate alone. Uniaxial tensile tests of PE were conducted under various cross-head speeds, and a digital camera was used to record the real-time deformation of specimens. By separating the composite effect into respective effect of local true strain and strain rate on the local true stress in the necking region, a phenomenological model for describing the rate-dependent deformation behavior under uniaxial tension was ealstablished. Model results were validated and found in good agreement with experimental data.