Physical Aging and Creep Behavior of Poly(Methyl Methacrylate)

In this work, the physical aging and its effect on nonlinear creep behavior of poly(methyl methacrylate) are presented. After annealing above Tg to release the previous thermal and stress history, the samples were quenched to 60oC, aged for various times, and were then tested at three different stress levels (22MPa, 26MPa and 30MPa) at room temperature of 27oC. At each stress level, the creep strain was converted to compliance and measured as a function of test time and aging time. The test results show that higher stress accelerates creep rate of the material while physical aging plays a reverse role. The time-aging time superposition is applicable to build a master creep compliance curve at each stress level, and it is demonstrated that the shift rate deceases with increasing stress. Moreover, based on the time-stress superposition principle, a unified master curve was constructed by further shifting the sub-master curves at 30MPa and 26 MPa to a reference stress level of 22MPa.