Creep and Stress Relaxation Behaviour of Rice Husk Reinforced Low Density Polyethylene Composites

Abstract

The creep and stress relaxation behavior of rice husk reinforced low density polyethylene composite was analyzed in this study. The exponential and power model were used to study the creep while the stress relaxation assessed the time required for the composites to maintain a certain strain level. The creep strain increased with increase in time, at various temperatures, with its highest creep at 70oC while the lowest is at 30oC, the power model provided an excellent fit than other models with a coefficient of determination of 0.9977 at 30oC, the neat low density polyethylene had a good stress relaxation behavior with 4.95 seconds for it to decay and subsequently decreased with increase in filler concentration.