Premium
An Affine Micro‐Sphere Model for Strain‐Induced Crystallization in Rubbery Polymers
Author(s) -
Nateghi Aref,
Keip MarcAndré,
Miehe Christian
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
pamm
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1617-7061
DOI - 10.1002/pamm.201710189
Subject(s) - crystallization , materials science , natural rubber , polymer , composite material , ultimate tensile strength , amorphous solid , hysteresis , crystallization of polymers , affine transformation , thermodynamics , crystallography , physics , mathematics , geometry , chemistry , quantum mechanics
Natural rubber crystallizes under stretch and its amorphous structure becomes semi‐crystalline. Tensile strength, fatigue life and crack growth resistance of rubber increases with crystallization. Crystallization leads to a hysteresis in the stress‐stretch diagram of rubber, see [1]. Recently, computational modeling of strain‐induced crystallization has drawn the attention of researchers, see [2, 3] and [4]. In this work, we propose a micromechanically motivated material model for strain‐induced crystallization in rubbers. To this end, we construct a microscopic model for a single crystallizing polymer chain based on non‐Gaussian chain statistics . A thermodynamically consistent evolution framework for crystallization in the chain level is proposed. The chain model is then integrated into the affine micro‐sphere model . Finally, numerical results obtained by the model are compared to experimental data. (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)