Morphological Micromechanics of Copolymeric Elastomers

Abstract eng:
This work studies the morphological micromechanics of copolymeric elastomers comprising two dissimilar domains. New threedimensional representative volume elements (RVE) are proposed to mimic more realistic morphological microstructures based on the Voronoi tessellation. We examined the micromechanical behaviours of bi-continuous and dispersed-particle morphologies derived from the Voronoi tessellation for specified volume fractions (vhard: 36% and 49%) of hard and soft domains. The random yet bi-continuous morphology was found to show better the inelastic stress-strain features of copolymeric elastomers under large deformation than the dispersed morphology, in which the hard aggregates are more likely to be isolated. The micromechanical results also show the topological connectivity in the two domains plays a critical role in the resilient yet dissipative mechanical behaviours extensively reported in this class of phase-separated elastomeric materials.

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