Abstract

The failure of adhesion between two polymers is a complex phenomenon involving bulk dissipation (i.e., shear yielding, cavitation and crazing), surface adhesion (through Van der Waals interactions) and connector chain pull-out. This article is concerned with a cohesive model for polymer surface separation, which incorporates connector pull-out since it is attempted to adjust this model on coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. This model is made of a viscoplastic constitutive equation taking inspiration from the works by Anand and Gurtin (2003). The MD simulations performed and here analysed were done in close collaboration with Prof. Erik van der Giessen (MuMec, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands).