Effect of Concentration of Ion in the Solution on the Deformation Behavior of Gel under Simple Tension

Abstract

Elastomeric gels are soft-elastic materials consisting of a three-dimensional cross-linked polymer network and liquid filling the space among such network. To take advantage of the swelling-deformation behavior of elastomeric gel and explore its possibility for applications in engineering as a structural member, the effect of concentration of ion in the solution on the deformation behavior of gel should be clarified, especially when the gel is loaded inside the solution. In this study, we at first proposed a nonaffine model for the elastomeric gel to account for the change of the entangling structure of polymer chains during the swelling-deformation process, in which the change of the number of polymer chains per unit volume N is depending on the first invariant of right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor I₁. And then, the simple tensional deformation behavior of gel is calculated when the gel is loaded inside the solution with different concentration of ion. The results show that the nonaffine model can reproduce the experimental results very well. Moreover, the high concentration of ion leads to the high deformation resistance.