Experimental Studies on Viscoelasticity of Film Materials in Laminated Glass Sheets 2015-01-0709

Polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film and SentryGlas® Plus (SGP) film have been widely used in automotive windshield and architecture curtain serving as protective interlayer materials. Viscoelasticity is the unique property of such film materials, which can contribute to improving impact resistance and energy absorbing characteristics of laminated glass. In this study, the uniaxial tensile creep and stress relaxation tests are conducted to investigate the viscoelasticity of PVB and SGP films used in laminated glass. Firstly, tensile creep and stress relaxation tests of PVB film (0.76mm) and SGP film with three thickness (0.89mm, 1.14mm and 1.52mm) are conducted using Instron universal testing machine to obtain creep and stress relaxation curves. Afterwards, both viscoelastic models (Burgers model, Maxwell-Weichert model) and empirical equations (Findley power law, Kohlrausch equation) are applied to simulate the creep and stress relaxation results. The simulating results from both models and empirical equations are in good agreement with the creep and relaxation experimental results. Furthermore, an additional effort is carried out to analyze the influence of material properties on parameters of viscoelastic models and empirical equations. Results may provide basic experimental data and theoretical support to explore energy absorbing characteristics and safety design of laminated glass.