Polymers: From single chains to continuum bodies
Overwhelmingly many materials are comprised of polymers. In these a vast amount of single polymer chains are connected by various mechanisms to form a three-dimensional network. Such polymeric materials can be found in both industrial products and nature. Motivated by its abundant occurrence the development of a material model for polymeric networks has been the aim of many efforts. To derive such a model based on microscopic effects one needs first to examine the mechanical behaviour of a single polymer chain.
In the last decades techniques have been developed to conduct tensile tests on single polymeric molecules. The target of currently ongoing research at the institute of solid mechanics is the development of a mechanistic model able of reproducing the results of these experiments. Eventually the knowledge of the mechanical behaviour of a single polymer chain can be used to deduce a model of a polymeric network. Further, we also aim to the degradation and erosion in polymers. The modelling is motivated by a micromechanical description. Since degradation leads to the erosion of polymers, the modelling approach will consider the dependency of both effects. Here, degradation is modelled as a chemo mechanical problem. In order to simulate degradation and erosion in complex geometries, the modelling approach is embedded into a finite element framework.