NON-LINEAR FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF A POLYMER-MADE MACHINE PART

Polymers are more and more popular as structural materials nowadays. However, their material behaviour is much more complicatedthan that of metals. In the present paper, a polypropylene-made automobile part is studied. The point of interest is itsresponse to periodic excitations. Both geometric and material nonlinearities are present in the problem. To solve it, a finiteelement model, composed of thick shell elements is prepared and presented. Ituses a three-parameter Maxwell material modelthat is built by the authors based on measurement data from the literature. To verify the finite element results, measurementsare also done and evaluated. Eigenfrequencies (of the nonlinear system) are quite well approximated. However, as shown, othereffects such as modal dissipation depending on frequency can not be modeled with this material law.