Study Of Relationships Between Polymer Blends Meso-Structure And Effective Mechanical Properties

The need for those exceptionally strong,tough,lightweight structural materials in modern engineering applications has enabled the development of various high-performance composite materials. Nowadays many composite materials have successfully taken the place of lots of traditional materials. Among them, rubber-toughened polymers and other polymer matrix materials are important branches. So studies of the inter-relationship between meso-structure and macroscopic property have become increasingly important to gain a better scientific understanding of the mechanical behavior of polymer blends and develop new material microstructures. In this paper, topology,particle volume fraction,particle size,interface property and particle shape of rubber-toughened polymers have been investigated numerically. The cell model corresponding to particle distribution status is established and elastic-plastic Finite Element Analysis is carried out to obtain the effective mechanical properties. Young's modulus,Possion's ratio and effective yield stress of each status are obtained. In our study we also take an exploration to toughening mechanism using our models. For matrix yielding,crazing and interface debonding all play an important role in the toughening process of rubber-toughened polymers. Our simulation takes use of stress concentration factor,yield ratio and interface elements' strain difference to investigate its relationship with matrix yielding,crazing and interface debonding. By our work relations between meso-structure status and mechanical properties of polymer blends can be gotten. Influence of meso-structure on toughening mechanism is achieved. Our result is helpful with a better understanding of toughening mechanism and meso-structure failure mechanism.