Deformation and toughness of amorphous polymers : numerical evaluation of heterogeneous systems

Abstract

This paper addresses the use of the Multi-Level Finite Element Method to analyze the heterogeneous deformation of two-phase polymer blends. Two important length scales are considered: the heterogeneous RVE (representative volume element) and that of the continuous scale. Analyses like these not only improve our understanding of the phenomena that occur on the different scales, but also give directions towards improvement of existing materials