The effectiveness of interconversion methods based on the distributed nature of polymeric structure

Abstract

In the present work, a comparative study on the capability of two approaches to successfully interconvert linear viscoelastic functions is performed. The main concept arises from our previous works, where a polymeric material is treated as a collection of meso‐regions, each one of them with a specific energy barrier. The linking between meso‐regions and their rearrangements leads to a time‐dependent constitutive equation. A crucial issue is the distribution of the energy barriers of the meso‐regions, revealing the importance of the distributed nature of the polymeric structure. In this work, the effect of the distribution type was examined by assuming either a Gaussian distribution function or a normalized loss modulus distribution, which can be evaluated from the loss modulus experimental data. Four different polymers were examined and it was proved that both treatments can satisfactorily predict the creep and relaxation function, once the model parameters are evaluated on the basis of dynamic moduli experimental data.