Acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene (ABS) is a very significant and widely used amorphous thermoplastic which, on account of its importance in industry, multiplied billions of dollars are spent yearly in the United States alone, not to talk of the rest of the world. It is primarily utilized in industry and domestic situations due to its high damage resistance properties. This fact makes it a required exercise for serious and thorough research in this area to go ahead. In this article, the tension, compression, and bending response behavior of ABS material under various strain rate levels tests were investigated. Its characterization under tensile, compression, and other mechanical testing is thus quite important, to elicit ways of enhancing properties that would make the material or structures made from it, better in service. In the current phase, tension, compression, shear, and flexural samples were tested, because it is of interest to know how the longitudinal and shear loading damages propagate through the specimen length and thickness, and how the microstructure is affected from point to point, both laterally and depth-wise. The issues of energy transfer and dissipation are significant in terms of the effectiveness of this material as a damage retarder. Mat_187 nonlinear material model in Ls-Dyna was utilized to numerically evaluate the behavior of ABS under tension, compression, and three-point bending. The experimental results compared favorably to the numerical results.

A satisfactory reproduction of three-point bending and impact test data of an industrially important amorphous polymer, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), in the context of finite element analysis is of prime importance to industry. Constitutive material models developed for amorphous polymers are capable of describing their complex mechanical behavior under multiaxial loadings with a variety of success; therefore, the computational accuracy directly depends on the selection of constitutive model and a proper determination of its associated parameters. Thus, this study aimed at accurately predicting the multiaxial mechanical behavior of ABS by the Anand–Gurtin elastic–viscoplastic material model selected as the constitutive model and employed for the first time in the numerical implementations of the three-point bending and impact tests of ABS. To this end, the constitutive model parameters never identified for ABS before was first determined mainly depending on uniaxial compression test data at various strain rates ranging from 2 × 10⁻⁴ s⁻¹ to 2 × 10⁻¹ s⁻¹ and then validated against tension test data for a broad range of strain rates varying from 1 × 10⁻³ s⁻¹ to 45 s⁻¹. All the experimental data taken into consideration in this study was taken from the previous studies of authors. The material model with the validated constitutive parameters of ABS was utilized in the numerical implementation of three-point bending tests for two different bending speeds (0.05–10 mm/s), in addition, impact tests for two various low impact velocities (4.43–6.23 m/s). Numerical results revealed that the constitutive model successfully reproduces the three-point bending test data of ABS for both bending speeds but acceptably overestimates the impact response of ABS under both low impact velocities in terms of peak impact load. Hence, it was concluded that this computationally inexpensive complex material model with the constitutive parameters determined for ABS can be used in the accurate prediction of its multiaxial material behavior.

Acrylonitrile–Butadiene–Styrene (ABS) is a very significant and widely used amorphous thermoplastic that possesses high impact resistance, toughness, and heat resistance. Bending collapse is a predominant failure of polymeric structural members in the vehicle environment under angled and unsymmetrical collisions. Therefore, it becomes critical to investigate the flexural behavior of the ABS beam and find its energy absorption capabilities under a transverse loading scenario. Four-point bending tests were carried out at different strain rates and at two different span lengths to investigate the deformation behavior of ABS. This paper examines the influence of strain rate, friction coefficient, Generalized Incremental Stress-State MOdel (GISSMO) and Damage Initiation and Evolution (DIEM) damage models, yield surfaces, and the span length on the four-point flexural behavior of the ABS polymeric material. A Semi-Analytical material model (SAMP_1) in LSDYNA was utilized to numerically evaluate the behavior of ABS under four-point bending. From extensive investigative explorations, it was found that the flexural behavior of ABS is dependent upon the span length, loading strain rate, and friction coefficient between the specimen and the supports. The modeling of damage was successfully exemplified by using the inherent damage law of the SAMP-1 material model, GISSMO, and DIEM damage formulations.

Effects of the addition of hemp fiber particles on the compressive and flexural behaviors of an industrially important amorphous thermoplastic, Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS), were investigated for the first time in this study. Particles with a size of 67–500 μm were first extracted from 10% NaOH alkaline-treated hemp fibers, and then incorporated into ABS at three various weight ratios (1wt%, 5wt% and 10wt%). Compression and three-point bending tests results revealed that both the compressive and flexural modulus of ABS increase with increasing particle content, but its compressive post-yield and flexural strengths decrease as enhancing particle content. The test results also showed that increasing particle content results in a significant improvement in the compressive modulus of ABS, but a slight enhancement in its flexural modulus. The notch-impact test results revealed that the impact strength of ABS is adversely affected by the incorporation of hemp fiber particles. The FT-IR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) analysis results indicated that mechanical bonding is formed between matrix and natural particles rather than chemical bonding. The SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) results put forth that the observed decrease in both the compressive post-yield and flexural strength is mainly due to the lack of strong mechanical bonding between ABS and particles. The three-point bending test data of the materials were satisfactorily reproduced using the linear Drucker-Prager material model in Abaqus engineering software.