Abstract
It is possible to consider a solid polymer as either a uniform mechanical continuum which responds in a predictable way to stress and strain or as a macromolecular solid made up of long molecules for which deformation causes a disturbance of the inter- and intra-molecular bonding. For many engineering applications the continuum approach is the most useful and the discipline of fracture mechanics outlined in Chapter 3 is based upon the assumption that the material undergoing fracture may be assumed to be a continuum. The reason that this assumption holds and that continuum mechanics appears to work for atomic and molecular solids is due to the fact that variations in the deformation and orientation of the individual bonds tend to be ‘averaged-out’ since objects of macroscopic proportions contain a vast number of atoms or molecules. Hence continuum mechanics can be applied to solids as they respond on a macroscopic level in a uniform way to stress and strain even though deformation at the atomic or molecular level may be highly inhomogeneous. In fact, it is now well established that in deformed polymer samples some molecules are much more highly stressed than others and only a minute fraction of the molecules are involved in the fracture event.
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Kinloch, A.J., Young, R.J. (1995). Molecular Aspects. In: Fracture Behaviour of Polymers. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1594-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1594-2_2
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