Micromechanics of polymeric materials in aggressive environments

Abstract

The advantages of polymeric materials have led to substantial interests in a variety of engineering applications, such as high-speed aircrafts, ultra-deepwater operations, and biomedical devices. Polymeric materials used in these systems must be capable of withstanding aggressive environments and still maintain their long-term load-bearing capability.With the development of novel polymer blends and composites to meet physical, chemical, thermal, and mechanical requirements, constitutive relations, deformation and toughening mechanisms, and damage and fracture characteristics of these multiphase polymeric materials have drawn significant attention. Multidisciplinary principles are required for studying the behavior of polymeric materials subjected to combined thermomechanical loading and physicochemically active environment exposure. The major challenge lies in the coupling of physical, chemical, thermal, and mechanical effects at multiple scales. It is necessary to establish generally applicable material models for implementation in robust design analysis tools. In this chapter, an overview on development of coupled multidisciplinary approach and advancement in computational micromechanics for polymeric materials in aggressive environments is provided with discussion on key methods, future directions, and open issues.