Eyring theory for plasticity in amorphous polymers violates Curie's principle.

In 1936, Eyring introduced a model for plastic flow which still forms the bedrock of practically all studies on plasticity of glassy polymers. Though the concept of activated process he introduced is fundamentally relevant, we argue here that under no circumstances can the Eyring model be correct as it violates Curie's principle, which is a basic physical requirement of statistical mechanics. An alternative model was proposed by [Long , , 2018, , 105601] to describe the acceleration of the dynamics by an applied stress, in which the elastic energy stored at the length scale of dynamical heterogeneities ≈ 3 - 5 nm reduces the free energy barriers for relaxation.

Numerical study of a slip-link model for polymer melts and nanocomposites.

We present a numerical study of the slip link model introduced by Likhtman for describing the dynamics of dense polymer melts. After reviewing the technical aspects associated with the implementation of the model, we extend previous work in several directions. The dependence of the relaxation modulus with the slip link density and the slip link stiffness is reported.