Research on relaxation modulus of viscoelastic materials under unsteady temperature states based on TTSP

The main goal of this work is to obtain relaxation curves of Hydroxyl-Terminated Polybutadiene (HTPB) propellant under unsteady temperature states. A series of relaxation tests of HTPB were carried out, with the strain level epsilon (0) of the tests being applied with a ramp time of strain rate . A method is proposed to compensate for stress relaxation during the period of strain rate loading. The proposed method is compared to a numerical method and a general method in terms of accuracy of determination of relaxation modulus. The results show that the relaxation moduli obtained by the proposed method and the numerical method are more accurate than those from the general method; in addition, the proposed method is more convenient in data processing. The relaxation modulus values under unsteady temperature states were obtained from a series of relaxation curves under constant temperature, and at different temperatures according to Time-Temperature Superposition Principle (TTSP). In this work, reduced time is defined as a function of time-temperature shift factor a (T) and a variable psi(T) called 'zero time' which depends on temperature. A comparison of test results showed that the values of relaxation modulus that take 'zero time' into account are more accurate than those without 'zero time'.