AbstractIn order to investigate the viscoelastic‐plastic properties of polymer solids and construct a constitutive equation for them, torsional tests were performed on polypropylene (PP) hollow cylinders. Testing was conducted under constant strain rate, abrupt change of strain rate, stress relaxation, creep, and cyclic loading conditions. The experimental data were compared with the numerical results derived from an overstress model. It is shown that the overstress theory explains the viscoelastic‐plastic properties of PP well, provided that the current strain is not below the maximum previous str