A unified model of stress relaxation and creep applied to oriented polyethylene

The stress relaxation behaviour of high-modulus oriented polyethylene fibre has been studied with regard to the response to successive small strain increments imposed on an initial relatively large strain deformation. For isotropic polymers, the results of such experiments have previously been interpreted in terms of a single thermally activated process modified by strain hardening. It has been found that, although this approach can describe satisfactorily some of the stress relaxation experiments on the oriented polyethylene fibres, it is unsatisfactory once the strain increments have exceeded a certain size, and that it is at variance with stress recovery experiments. It is shown that both the present stress relaxation and stress recovery experiments can be interpreted in terms of a model comprising two thermally activated processes acting in parallel. Furthermore, the parameters obtained for the stress relaxation data are consistent with those required to fit creep data obtained in a comparable stress range. The essential feature of the mechanical behaviour which was previously attributed to strain hardening can now be seen to arise from the transfer of stress between the two thermally activated processes in the two-process model.