Effective properties and size effects in filled polymers

Abstract

Filled polymers are of special interest according to their superior mechanical properties. Special attention is given to nano-filled polymers where not only the volume fraction but also the internal surface has a significant contribution to the effective properties. In the present contribution the increase in stiffness with decreasing size of the fillers at constant volume fraction of the fillers is modelled by a phenomenological, i.e. continuum-based, approach taking into account large deformations. The proposed multiphase model allows for a systematic investigation of increasing surface-to-volume ratio which becomes important for micro-and nanosized fillers. The numerical treatment of the proposed model is based on a coupled Galerkin finite element formulation.

Effective Mechanical Behavior of Filled Polymers

“…A single energy function is also possible but needs more computation time and causes in a time-dependency of the structure parameter and a coupling between the balances, cf. [30,31]. Such behavior cannot be motivated at the moment because no researcher observed it with respect to experiments.…”

“…Different experimental methods on different scales have been used to examine the interphase's properties but a general explanation for the formation of the interphase is still missing, especially due to the diversity of the observed effects [17,[26][27][28][29][30][31].…”