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Confined geometries offer useful and experimentally amenable mechanical testing arrangements in which to study the molecular and micro-structural processes which govern plastic yield in stress environments dominated by hydrostatic pressure…
The change of the structure of concentrated colloidal suspensions upon addition of non-adsorbing polymer is studied within a two-component, Ornstein-Zernicke based liquid state approach. The polymers' conformational degrees of freedom are…
This paper develops a damage model for unfilled cross-linked rubbers based on the concept of scission of polymer chains. The model is built up on the well-known Gent elastic potential complemented by a kinetic equation describing effects of…
A thermodynamically related model is developed for describing elastic rubber-like behavior of amorphous and crystallizing polymers and demonstrated on example of simple extension. Both the “entropic” and “energetic”…
We investigate the stretching response of a thick polymer model by means of extensive stochastic simulations. The computational results are synthesized in an analytic expression that characterizes how the force versus elongation curve…
The effect of network chain distribution on the mechanical behavior of elastomers is one of the long-standing problems in rubber mechanics. The classical theory of rubber elasticity is built upon the assumption of entropic elasticity of…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
We have developed a theory of polymer entanglement using an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, with two extra terms. One is a nonlocal attractive term, operating over mesoscales, which is interpreted as giving rise to entanglement, and the…
Effect of small additive molecules on the structural relaxation of polymer melts is investigated via molecular dynamics simulations. At a constant external pressure and a fixed number concentration of added molecules, the variation of…
We investigate the effect of macromolecular crowding on protein folding, using purely repulsive crowding particles and a self-organizing polymer model of protein folding. We find that the thermodynamics of folding for typical alpha-, beta-…
We use molecular simulations to study jamming of a crumpled bead-spring model polymer in a finite container and compare to jamming of repulsive spheres. After proper constraint counting, the onset of rigidity is seen to occur isostatically…
We report simulation results on melts of entangled linear polymers confined in a free-standing thin film. We study how the geometric constraints imposed by the confinement alter the entanglement state of the system compared to the…
Experimental data are reported on the elastoplastic response of and moisture diffusion through a vinyl ester resin-montmorillonite clay nanocomposite with various amounts of filler. Two simple models are developed for the elastoplastic…
A block of rubber eventually buckles under severe flexure, and several axial wrinkles appear on the inner curved face of the bent block. Experimental measurements reveal that the buckling occurs earlier ---at lower compressive strains---…
Polymers at the interface exhibit frustrated chain conformation distinct from the bulk, impacting particle dispersion and properties of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs). Utilizing bimodal molecular weight (MW) PNCs, we observed unusual chain…
Polymer composite materials are widely used for their exceptional mechanical properties, notably their ability to resist large deformations. Here we examine the failure stress and strain of rubbers reinforced by varying amounts of…
The wormlike chain model of stiff polymers is a nonlinear $\sigma$-model in one spacetime dimension in which the ends are fluctuating freely. This causes important differences with respect to the presently available theory which exists only…
Active polymers possess numerous unique properties that are quite different from those observed in the system of small active molecule due to the intricate interplay between their activity and topological constraints. This study focuses on…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While traditional entropic network models can be fit to the total stress, their underlying assumptions are inconsistent with simulation results.…
We review the physical properties of macromolecular networks, consisting of semiflexible polymers such as actin. We start by giving a theoretical analysis of the conformational statistics and mechanical response of single filaments.…