Mechanical Behavior of Plastics

This course is aimed at presenting the concepts underlying the response of polymeric materials to applied loads. These will include both the molecular mechanisms involved and the mathematical description of the relevant continuum mechanics. It is dominantly an “engineering” subject, but with an atomistic flavor. It covers the influence of processing and structure on mechanical properties of synthetic and natural polymers: Hookean and entropic elastic deformation, linear viscoelasticity, composite materials and laminates, yield and fracture.