Fracture and Toughening Mechanisms of Glassy Polymer at the Molecular Level

Abstract

Fracture is one of the most important topics in the polymer field. Accordingly, many insightful works about polymer fracture have been reported since the 1960s. This topical review considers polymer fracture studies of experiments, theoretical models, and simulations. These past studies have discussed craze initiation criteria, yielding mechanisms, and differences in the fracture of different chemical species. New insight into polymer fracture based on large-scale molecular simulations is also provided.