Polymer, Vol.38, No.16, 4049-4052, 1997
Functionality Dependence for Molecular Nonaffine Deformation of Polymer Networks
The dependence of the stress-strain behaviour of polymer networks on functionality is investigated. The network is described in terms of a gas of simple units of arbitrary functionality f. The macroscopic deformation is taken into account by constraints, which allow molecular nonaffine deformations. For Gaussian network strands the model leads to the same stress-strain dependence as in the well known model, but shows a modified dependence of the modulus on functionality.