Atomic-Level Modelling for Predicting Interface Strength in Resin Molded Structures

Abstract

In the framework of atomistic-level modeling, a new technique for predicting the interface strength of the resin-mold structure has been proposed. We show that our proposed interfacial fracture energy is effective in determining the adhesion strength of three kinds of interfaces between epoxy resin and metals (Cu, Fe and Al). We also discuss the multi-scale connection between nano-scale adhesion and macro-scale interface strength in terms of interface roughness. When the interface with roughness is subject to shear load under vertical residual stress in experiments, FEM analysis taking account of the effect of interface roughness shows that local debonding (mode-I) due to the tensile stress induces global delamination. Our proposed method for dealing with local mode-I debonding by use of molecular dynamics is found to be effective in simulating the interfacial fracture with the shear load.