Fatigue and failure of a polymer chain under tension
Abstract
The rupture of a polymer chain maintained at temperature under fixed tension is prototypical to a wide array of systems failing under constant external strain and random perturbations. Past research focused on analytic and numerical studies of the mean rate of collapse of such a chain. Surprisingly, an analytic calculation of the probability distribution function (PDF) of collapse rates appears to be lacking. Since rare events of rapid collapse can be important and even catastrophic, we present here a theory of this distribution, with a stress on its tail of fast rates. We show that the tail of the PDF is a power law with a {\em universal} exponent that is theoretically determined. Extensive numerics validate the offered theory. Lessons pertaining to other problems of the same type are drawn.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2008.00970,
title = {Fatigue and failure of a polymer chain under tension},
author = {Harish Charan and Alex Hansen and H. G. E. Hentschel and Itamar Procaccia},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.00970},
year = {2021}
}