Related papers: Simple generic picture of toughness in solid polym…
Large-scale simulations of thermal welding of polymers are performed to investigate the rise of mechanical strength at the polymer-polymer interface with the welding time. The welding process is in the core of integrating polymeric elements…
Statistical models are essential to get a better understanding of the role of disorder in brittle disordered solids. Fiber bundle models play a special role as a paradigm, with a very good balance of simplicity and non-trivial effects. We…
Obtaining a rigorous and reliable method for linking computer simulations of polymer blends and composites at different length scales of interest is a highly desirable goal in soft matter physics. In this paper a multiscale modeling…
The toughness of a polymer material can increase significantly if two networks are combined into one material. This toughening effect is a consequence of a transition from a brittle to a ductile failure response. Although this transition…
We employ effective interaction potentials to study the equilibrium structure and phase behavior of highly asymmetric mixtures of star polymers. We consider in particular the influence of the addition of a component with a small number of…
The viscosity enhancement of a solvent produced by the addition of thickening branched polymers is predicted as a function of polymer concentration, branch length and persistence length, and strength of the covalent bonding interactions.…
By taking advantage of the molecular weight dependence of the glass transition of polymers and their ability to form perfectly miscible blends, we propose a way to modify the fragility of a system, from fragile to strong, keeping the same…
Numerous models have been developed in the literature to simulate the thermomechanical behavior of amorphous polymer at large strain. These models generally show a good agreement with experimental results when the material is submitted to…
We investigate the mechanical properties of amorphous polymers by means of coarse-grained simulations and nonaffine lattice dynamics theory. A small increase of polymer chain bending stiffness leads first to softening of the material, while…
We study the clustering properties of inertial particles in a turbulent viscoelastic fluid. The investigation is carried out by means of direct numerical simulations of turbulence in the Oldroyd-B model. The effects of polymers on the small…
The mechanical property enhancement of polymer reinforced with nano-thin clay platelets (of high aspect ratio) is associated with a high polymer-filler interfacial area per unit volume. The ideal case of fully separated (exfoliated)…
Brittle-ductile transition (BDT) is an important characteristic of amorphous (and semicrystalline) polymers. For a given strain rate, at temperatures above BDT, the polymers exhibit strain softening followed by yield and strain hardening,…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
Simple homogeneous shear flows of frictionless, deformable particles are studied by particle simulations at large shear rates and for differently soft, deformable particles. The particle stiffness sets a time-scale that can be used to scale…
Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…
The surface tension of interacting polymers in a good solvent is calculated theoretically and by computer simulations for a planar wall geometry and for the insertion of a single colloidal hard-sphere. This is achieved for the planar wall…
Understanding the fracture toughness of glasses is of prime importance for science and technology. We study it here using extensive atomistic simulations in which the interaction potential, glass transition cooling rate and loading geometry…
It has been revealed by mean-field theories and computer simulations that the nature of the collapse transition of a polymer is influenced by its bending stiffness $\epsilon_{\rm b}$. In two dimensions, a recent analytical work demonstrated…
We have generalized the Edwards' method of collective description of dense polymer systems in terms of effective potentials to polymer blends in the presence of a surface. With this method we have studied conformationally asymmetric…
By means of sophisticated Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the conformational phase diagram of a simple model for flexible polymers with explicit thickness. The thickness constraint, which is introduced geometrically via the global…