A robust physically consistent three-dimensional constitutive model is developed to describe the finite mechanical response of amorphous polymers over a wide range of temperatures and strain rates, including the rubbery region and for impact loading rates. This thermomechanical model is based on an elastic-viscoplastic rheological approach, wherein the effects of temperature, strain rate, and hydrostatic pressure are accounted for. Intramolecular, as well as intermolecular, interactions under large elastic-inelastic behavior are considered for the mechanisms of deformation and hardening. For a wide range of temperatures and strain rates, our simulated results for poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polycarbonate (PC) are in good agreement with experimental observations.

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The recently developed hybrid discontinuous Galerkin/extrinsic cohesive law framework is extended to the study of intra-laminar fracture of composite materials. Toward this end, micro-volumes of different sizes are studied. The method captures the debonding process, which is herein proposed to be assimilated to a damaging process, before the strain softening onset, and the density of dissipated energy resulting from the damage (debonding) remains the same for the different studied cell sizes. Finally, during the strain softening phase a micro-crack initiates and propagates in agreement with experimental observations. We thus extract a resulting mesoscale cohesive law, which is independent on the cell sizes, using literature methods.

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