Progressive damage and rupture in polymers

Abstract

Progressive damage, which eventually leads to failure, is ubiquitous in biological and synthetic polymers. The simplest case to consider is that of elastomeric materials, which can undergo large reversible deformations with negligible rate dependence. In this paper, we develop a theory for modeling progressive damage and rupture of such materials. We extend the phase-field method, which is widely used to describe the damage and fracture of brittle materials, to elastomeric materials undergoing large deformations. A central feature of our theory is the recognition that the free energy of elastomers is not entirely entropic in nature-there is also an energetic contribution from the deformation of the bonds in the chains. It is the energetic part in the free energy which is the driving force for progressive damage and fracture.

An adaptive quasicontinuum approach for modeling fracture in networked materials: Application to modeling of polymer networks

“…While methods for modeling the nonlinear elastic response of polymeric materials are well established [41,6] , modeling fracture and damage in soft polymeric materials continue to elicit challenges in science and engineering [42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50]. However, despite enabling useful insights, most of the existing techniques suffer from a number of limitations.…”

A compact constitutive model to describe the viscoelastic-plastic behaviour of glassy polymers: Comparison with monotonic and cyclic experiments and state-of-the-art models

“…Considering solid or glassy polymers, the distinguished and recent models are mainly focused on large strain plasticity (group 1), Boyce et al (1989); Wu and Van der Giessen (1993); Anand and Gurtin (2003); Anand and Ames (2006); Bouvard et al (2010); Gudimetla and Doghri (2017), or serve a micro-mechanically motivated damage evolution (group 2), Tomita and Uchida (2003); Engqvist et al (2016); Deng et al (2017); Jiang et al (2017); Talamini et al (2018), or are applied in the research of crack-controlled failure (group 3), Ritchie (1999); James et al (2013); Ravi Chandran (2016); Awaja et al (2016); Hughes et al (2017); Talamini et al (2018); George et al (2018). Models in group 2 consider damage processes that emerge in micro-level failures, such as polymer chain breakage and propagation of microscopic flaws termed microvoids and -cracks, Tomita and Uchida (2003); Jiang et al (2017); Talamini et al (2018). The research in group 3 is focused on the coalescence of said microflaws when macroscopic cracks may originate and affect the final rupture, James et al (2013); Ravi Chandran (2016); Awaja et al (2016); Hughes et al (2017); Talamini et al (2018).…”

“…Models in group 2 consider damage processes that emerge in micro-level failures, such as polymer chain breakage and propagation of microscopic flaws termed microvoids and -cracks, Tomita and Uchida (2003); Jiang et al (2017); Talamini et al (2018). The research in group 3 is focused on the coalescence of said microflaws when macroscopic cracks may originate and affect the final rupture, James et al (2013); Ravi Chandran (2016); Awaja et al (2016); Hughes et al (2017); Talamini et al (2018). Most models in group 3 have been implemented to detect crack growth in tiny zones and have not been applied at component level, James et al (2013); Awaja et al (2016); Hughes et al (2017).…”

How Soft Polymers Cope with Cracks and Notches

“…If macroscopic flaws are introduced in the form of cuts, cracks or notches, the stretchability can be affected in different measure, depending on the flaw sensitivity of the material. The concept of a material length scale, separating flaw-sensitive from flaw-insensitive rupture, has been initially proposed for hard materials [15] and later extended to soft polymers [16]. Differently from traditional crystalline solids, rupture of soft polymers occurs at large deformation, when the rearrangement of the polymeric chains leads to flaw reshaping and strengthening around the highest strained region.…”