Mechanical Properties and Creep Characteristics of Wood/PVC Composites at Different Temperatures

This paper investigated the effect of temperature on the mechanical properties and tensile creep response of Wood/PVC (WPVC) composite materials. The tensile, compressive, and flexural properties were measured at room temperature, 40°C, 50°C, 60°C and 70°C, respectively. The short term tensile creep at different temperatures was also investigated to obtain the creep characteristics of WPVC composites using power law models. The experimental results summarized that all mechanical properties of WPVC composites decreased significantly by an increasing in temperature, especially for the applied temperatures with higher than 50 °C. The tensile creep models of WPVC composites were obtained for both time-stress dependent and time-stress-temperature dependent. These creep models can be used to predict the long term deformation of WPVC composites for the design phase of WPVC composite structural member. Keywords—Wood/PVC composites, Mechanical properties, Creep characteristics, Power law model, Temperature effect.