Deviatoric stress driven transient melting below the glass transition temperature in shocked polymers

J Macatangay and BW Hamilton and A Strachan, JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS, 132, 035901 (2022).

DOI: 10.1063/5.0095731

The relaxation of polymers around and below their glass transition temperature is governed by a range of correlated unit processes with a wide range of timescales. The fast deformation rates of shock loading can suppress a significant fraction of these processes resulting in dynamical glass transition in rubbers. In this article, we report the inverse, a transient melting of a glassy polymer under shock loading. The large deviatoric stresses near the shock front induce fast transitions in backbone dihedral angles and a stress relaxation characteristic of polymer melts. This is followed by slower relaxation expected for glasses.

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