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Register a new userMolecular Dynamics Study to Predict Thermo-Mechanical Properties of DGEBF/DETDA Epoxy as a Function of Crosslinking Density
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Epoxy resins are used extensively in composite materials for a wide range of engineering applications, including structural components of aircraft and spacecraft. The processing of fiber-reinforced epoxy composite structures requires carefully selected heating and cooling cycles to fully cure the resin and form strong crosslinked networks. To fully optimize the processing parameters for effective epoxy monomer crosslinking and final product integrity, the evolution of mechanical properties of epoxies during processing must be comprehensively understood. Because the full experimental characterization of these properties as a function of the degree of cure is difficult and time-consuming, efficient computational predictive tools are needed. The objective of this research is to develop an experimentally validated Molecular Dynamics (MD) modeling method, which incorporates a reactive force field, to accurately predict the thermo-mechanical properties of an epoxy resin as a function of the degree of cure. Experimental rheometric and mechanical testing are used to validate an MD model which is subsequently used to predict mass density, shrinkage, elastic properties, and yield strength as a function of the degree of cure. The results indicate that each of the physical and mechanical properties evolve uniquely during the crosslinking process. These results are important for future processing modeling efforts.
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Epoxy resins are widely used polymer matrices for numerous applications. Despite substantial advances, the molecular-level knowledge-base required to exploit these materials to their full potential remains limited. A deeper comprehension of structure/property relationships in epoxy resins at the molecular level is critical to progressing these efforts. It can be laborious, if not impractical, to elucidate these relationships based on experiments alone. Here, molecular dynamics simulations are used to calculate and compare thermal conductivities and mechanical properties of an exemplar epoxy resin, Bisphenol F cross-linked with Diethyl Toluene Diamine, revealing these inter-relationships. Both elastic modulus and thermal transport of the epoxy resin show an increase with greater cross-linking. Specifically, decomposition of the thermal conductivity into different force contributions suggests that the bonded term contributes to an increase in the heat flux. These outcomes provide a foundation for designing and fabricating customized epoxy resins with desirable thermal and mechanical attributes.
Recently, a new class of carbon allotrope called protomene was proposed. This new structure is composed of sp2 and sp3 carbon-bonds. Topologically, protomene can be considered as an sp3 carbon structure (~80% of this bond type) doped by sp2 carbons. First-principles simulations have shown that protomene presents an electronic bandgap of ~3.4 eV. However, up to now, its mechanical properties have not been investigated. In this work, we have investigated protomene mechanical behavior under tensile strain through fully atomistic reactive molecular dynamics simulations using the ReaxFF force field, as available in the LAMMPS code. At room temperature, our results show that the protomene is very stable and the obtained ultimate strength and ultimate stress indicates an anisotropic behavior. The highest ultimate strength was obtained for the x-direction, with a value of ~110 GPa. As for the ultimate strain, the highest one was for the z-direction (~25% of strain) before protomene mechanical fracture.
In this study, we report the mechanical properties and fracture mechanism of pre-cracked and defected InSe nanosheet samples using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We noticed that the failure of pre-cracked and defected InSe nanosheet is governed by brittle type fracture. Armchair directional bonds exhibit a greater resistance for crack propagation relative to the zigzag directional ones. Thus, fracture strength of the pre-cracked sheet is slightly higher for zigzag directional loading than that for armchair. We evaluated the limitation of the applicability of Griffiths criterion for single layer (SL) InSe sheet for nano-cracks as the brittle failure of Griffith prediction demonstrates significant differences with the MD fracture strength. We inspected the effect of temperature on the mechanical properties of the pre-cracked samples of SLInSe. We also discussed the fracture mechanism of both defected and pre-cracked structure at length.
Pentadiamond is a recently proposed new carbon allotrope consisting of a network of pentagonal rings where both sp$^2$ and sp$^3$ hybridization are present. In this work we investigated the mechanical and electronic properties, as well as, the thermal stability of pentadiamond using DFT and fully atomistic reactive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We also investigated its properties beyond the elastic regime for three different deformation modes: compression, tensile and shear. The behavior of pentadiamond under compressive deformation showed strong fluctuations in the atomic positions which are responsible for the strain softening at strains beyond the linear regime, which characterizes the plastic flow. As we increase temperature, as expected, Youngs modulus values decrease, but this variation (up to 300 K) is smaller than 10% (from 347.5 to 313.6 GPa), but the fracture strain is very sensitive, varying from $sim$44% at 1K to $sim$5% at 300K.
The ultra-low thermal conductivity (~0.3 Wm-1K-1) of amorphous epoxy resins significantly limits their applications in electronics. Conventional top-down methods e.g. electrospinning usually result in aligned structure for linear polymers thus satisfactory enhancement on thermal conductivity, but they are deficient for epoxy resin polymerized by monomers and curing agent due to completely different cross-linked network structure. Here, we proposed a bottom-up strategy, namely parallel-linking method, to increase the intrinsic thermal conductivity of bulk epoxy resin. Through equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we reported on a high thermal conductivity value of parallel-linked epoxy resin (PLER) as 0.80 Wm-1K-1, more than twofold higher than that of amorphous structure. Furthermore, by applying uniaxial tensile strains along the intra-chain direction, a further enhancement in thermal conductivity was obtained, reaching 6.45 Wm-1K-1. Interestingly, we also observed that the inter-chain thermal conductivities decrease with increasing strain. The single chain of epoxy resin was also investigated and, surprisingly, its thermal conductivity was boosted by 30 times through tensile strain, as high as 33.8 Wm-1K-1. Our study may provide a new insight on the design and fabrication of epoxy resins with high thermal conductivity.
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