A displacement based model to determine the steady state creep strain rate of short fiber composites

Abstract A novel analytical method is developed for predicting steady state creep of short fiber composites using shear-lag theory, imaginary fiber technique and polynomial displacement functions. Also, this method employs equilibrium and constitutive equations. Polynomial displacement method (PDM) is a new insight for analysis of plasticity and elasticity problems which can be used as a simple, exact and general method. PDM is more accurate than the available methods. Important novelties of the PDM are determination of unknowns such as shear stresses and displacement rates on top of the fiber analytically. In this paper, all unknowns are obtained by well-behaved polynomial displacement functions. These functions satisfy incompressibility and boundary conditions. In spite of the previous researches, strain rates and stresses are analytically obtained by PDM without non-analytical assumptions. Also, suitable agreements are found among present analytical method, numerical (FEM) and available published results.