Tensile behaviour of rayon cords in different conditions

Abstract

Different polymeric fibrous materials, such as polyester, nylon, aramid and rayon, can be employed as reinforcement in tyres or in other rubber composites. The present contribution focuses on the experimental characterization of rayon yarns and cords and makes some steps towards developing a constitutive model for cords, to be later integrated into a finite element procedure for the analysis of fibre-reinforced composites. Uniaxial tensile tests under monotonic and cyclic loading together with creep tests have been performed on rayon specimens in different conditions. A simple, preliminary viscoelastic-viscoplastic model is proposed which can describe the main experimental findings for untwisted yarns.