Network Centrality of Heterogeneous Elastomers for Describing Mechanical Property

There have been a lot of attempts to describe structure-property relationships of heterogeneous elastomers. However, it is hard to evaluate the heterogeneity quantitatively. In this presentation, we report the network structure of the elastomers in terms of connectivity was evaluated based on centrality, one of indicators utilized in complex network science, and its effect for the mechanical property was investigated. A construction and a uniaxial elongation of elastomers were performed with coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation. End-to-end distance of partial chains, which strongly affect stress in entropy elasticity was evaluated. We found that the end-to-end distance increased with increasing the network centrality. Furthermore, network centrality incorporating initial end-to-end distance could be a unified indicator for the mechanical property of the heterogeneous elastomers. We think the complex network could be one of the suitable approaches to reveal structure-property relationships of materials.