TY - JOUR
T1 - Fatigue-resistant polyurethane elastomer composites
AU - Zhang, Guogao
AU - Yin, Tenghao
AU - Nian, Guodong
AU - Suo, Zhigang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Polyurethane (PU) elastomers are among the most used rubberlike materials due to their combined merits, including high abrasion resistance, excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and good processing performance. A PU elastomer exhibits pronounced hysteresis, leading to a high toughness on the order of 104 J/m2. However, toughness gained from hysteresis is ineffective to resist crack growth under cyclic load, causing a fatigue threshold below 100 J/m2. Here we report a fatigue-resistant PU fiber–matrix composite, using commercially available Spandex as the fibers and PU elastomer as the matrix. The Spandex fibers are stiff, strong, and stretchable. The matrix is soft, tough, and stretchable. We describe a pullout test to measure the adhesion toughness between the fiber and matrix. The test is highly reproducible, showing an adhesion toughness of 3170 J/m2. The composite shows a maximum stretchability of 6.0, a toughness of 16.7 kJ/m2, and a fatigue threshold of 3900 J/m2. When a composite with a precut crack is stretched, the soft matrix causes the crack tip to blunt greatly, which distributes high stress over a long segment of the Spandex fiber ahead the crack tip. This deconcentration of stress makes the composite resist the growth of cracks under monotonic and cyclic loads. The PU elastomer composites open doors for realistic applications of fatigue-resistant elastomers.
AB - Polyurethane (PU) elastomers are among the most used rubberlike materials due to their combined merits, including high abrasion resistance, excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and good processing performance. A PU elastomer exhibits pronounced hysteresis, leading to a high toughness on the order of 104 J/m2. However, toughness gained from hysteresis is ineffective to resist crack growth under cyclic load, causing a fatigue threshold below 100 J/m2. Here we report a fatigue-resistant PU fiber–matrix composite, using commercially available Spandex as the fibers and PU elastomer as the matrix. The Spandex fibers are stiff, strong, and stretchable. The matrix is soft, tough, and stretchable. We describe a pullout test to measure the adhesion toughness between the fiber and matrix. The test is highly reproducible, showing an adhesion toughness of 3170 J/m2. The composite shows a maximum stretchability of 6.0, a toughness of 16.7 kJ/m2, and a fatigue threshold of 3900 J/m2. When a composite with a precut crack is stretched, the soft matrix causes the crack tip to blunt greatly, which distributes high stress over a long segment of the Spandex fiber ahead the crack tip. This deconcentration of stress makes the composite resist the growth of cracks under monotonic and cyclic loads. The PU elastomer composites open doors for realistic applications of fatigue-resistant elastomers.
KW - Adhesion
KW - Composite
KW - Fatigue threshold
KW - Polyurethane elastomer
KW - Toughness
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85110364246
U2 - 10.1016/j.eml.2021.101434
DO - 10.1016/j.eml.2021.101434
M3 - 文章
AN - SCOPUS:85110364246
SN - 2352-4316
VL - 48
JO - Extreme Mechanics Letters
JF - Extreme Mechanics Letters
M1 - 101434
ER -