LARGE STRAIN SWELLING RESPONSE OF SATURATED AND UNSATURATED ELASTOMER GELS
Thomas J. Pence & Neil T. Wright
Swelling plays an important role in many scientific applications including: metal corrosion, moisture permeation in soil, chemical processing of polymers, fuel cell performance, and stress-modulated biological growth. This project will provide coordinated theoretical and experimental development of a fundamentally new theoretical framework for modeling the interaction between the associated mass addition mechanisms and the resulting stress fields. Its intellectual merit stems from a previously unexplored dependence of stored energy upon volumetric change and subsequent elastic deformation. This is based on a novel substructural balance principle, which emerges from an extended energy minimization process, and generalizes a conventional continuum mechanics treatment to model processes at finer scales. The broader impact includes multi-scale modeling tool for a variety of systems involving complex physical and biological processes. The project will continue the investigators' efforts to collaborate with diverse groups, disseminate widely the results of research, and bring these results to the classroom.
