Material constant

The often-cited Amontons law [101. 102] describes friction in tenns of a friction coefiBcient, which is, a priori, a material constant, independent of contact area or dynamic parameters, such as sliding velocity, temperature or load. We know today that all of these parameters can have a significant influence on the magnitude of the measured friction force, especially in thin-film and boundary-lubricated systems. 

The left-hand side of our equation says that fast fracture will occur when, in a material subjected to a stress a, a crack reaches some critical size a or, alternatively, when material containing cracks of size a is subjected to some critical stress cr. The right-hand side of our result depends on material properties only E is obviously a material constant, and G, the energy required to generate unit area of crack, again must depend only on the basic properties of our material. Thus, the important point about the equation is that the critical combination of stress and crack length at which fast fracture commences is a material constant. 

It should be noted that although Table 1.8 gives specific values of Tg for different polymers, in reality the glass-transition temperature is not a material constant. As with many other properties of polymers it will depend on the testing conditions used to obtain it. 

As this is a material constant, it may be used to calculate Fc for the other... 

In a fluid under stress, the ratio of the shear stress, r. to the rate of strain, y, is called the shear viscosity, rj, and is analogous to the modulus of a solid. In an ideal (Newtonian) fluid the viscosity is a material constant. However, for plastics the viscosity varies depending on the stress, strain rate, temperature etc. A typical relationship between shear stress and shear rate for a plastic is shown in Fig. 5.1. 

These two moduli are not material constants and typical variations are shown in Fig. 5.3. As with the viscous components, the tensile modulus tends to be about three times the shear modulus at low stresses. Fig. 5.3 has been included here as an introduction to the type of behaviour which can be expected from a polymer melt as it flows. The methods used to obtain this data will be described later, when the effects of temperature and pressure will also be discussed. 

As with the piezoelectric case, material constants are most easily determined from the initial jump in current i(O-l-), which, from Eq. (4.16), is... 

Note that the transformed reduced stiffness matrix Qy has terms in all nine positions in contrast to the presence of zeros in the reduced stiffness matrix Qy. However, there are still only four independent material constants because the lamina is orthotropic. In the general case with body coordinates x and y, there is coupling between shear strain and normal stresses and between shear stress and normal strains, i.e., shear-extension coupling exists. Thus, in body coordinates, even an orthotropic lamina appears to be anisotropic. However, because such a lamina does have orthotropic characteristics in principal material coordinates, it is called a generally orthotropic lamina because it can be represented by the stress-strain relations in Equation (2.84). That is, a generally orthotropic lamina is an orthotropic lamina whose principai material axes are not aligned with the natural body axes. 

If these mechanical data are materials constants or processing- and morphology-dependent. 

The constant G, called the shear modulus, the modulus of rigidity, or the torsion modulus, is directly comparable to the modulus of elasticity used in direct-stress applications. Only two material constants are required to characterize a material if one assumes the material to be linearly elastic, homogeneous, and isotropic. However, three material constants exist the tensile modulus of elasticity (E), Poisson s ratio (v), and the shear modulus (G). An equation relating these three constants, based on engineering s elasticity principles, follows ... 

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