English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Open

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Insights

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

To assess the role of single-chain elasticity, non-affine strain fields andpre-stressed reference states we present and discuss the results of numericaland analytical analyses of modified 8-chain Arruda-Boyce model for cross-linkedpolymer networks. This class of models has proved highly successful in modelingthe finite-strain response of flexible rubbers. We extend it to include theeffects of spatial disorder and the associated non-affinity, and use it toassess the validity of replacing the constituent chain's nonlinear elasticresponse with equivalent linear, Hookean springs. Surprisingly, we find thateven in the regime of linear response, the full polymer model gives verydifferent results from its linearized counterpart, even though none of thechains are stretched beyond their linear regime. We demonstrate that thiseffect is due to the fact that the polymer models are under considerablepre-stress in their ground state. We show that pre-stress strongly suppressesnon-affinity in these unit cell models, resulting in a marked stiffening of thebulk response. The effects of pre-stress we discuss may explain why fullyaffine mechanical models, in many cases, predict the bulk mechanical responseof disordered stiff polymer networks so well.

Disorder, pre-stress and non-affinity in polymer 8-chain models