Monte Carlo Simulations of Stress Relaxation in Polymer Stretching

Industrial polymer processing such as fiber spinning, plastic molding, film stretching and film blowing are commonly performing stretching with stress relaxation. In the previous Monte Carlo simulations on strain-induced polymer crystallization [1-3], we have developed a scheme to stretch the polymers in a network without any stress relaxation. Here a proper stress relaxation on the basis of Brownian motions of polymer chains is incorporated into this stretching process. The results demonstrated the Debye-type stress relaxation behaviors, and the Arrhenius-type temperature dependence of their characteristic relaxation times. The new scheme allows us to further investigate how the stress relaxation influencing polymer crystallization during stretching, and thus understand better the microscopic mechanism of polymer processing.
References
[1]Nie,YJ.;Gao,HH;Yu,MH.;Hu,ZM;Reiter,G.;Hu, WB.Polymer.2013,54:3402-3407.
[2]Nie,YJ.;Gao,HH.;Wu,YX.;Hu,WB.Soft Matter.2014,10:343-347.
[3]Nie,YJ.;Gao,HH.;Hu,WB.Polymer.2014,55:1267-1272.