Influence of damage on inhomogeneous deformation behavior of amorphous glassy polymers. Modeling and algorithmic implementation in a finite element setting

The objective of this work is to investigate the influence of damage mechanisms on inhomogeneous deformation behavior of amorphous glassy polymers. The mechanical properties of glassy polymers are strongly influenced by the microstructure which is typically described by network models. In order to improve the network model predictions at large multidimensional deformations, a distributed growth of void volume, crazing and possible disentanglement are investigated and considered in a part of the proposed viscoelastic-plastic model. The importance of different theological properties employed in the model for regarding mechanical behavior is investigated and the role of damage in localized deformation is addressed. In order to evaluate the predictions of the proposed model, algorithmic constitutive equations are derived and implemented in a finite element program. The model is employed to the simulation of the cold drawing of dumbbell shaped test specimen. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.