Deformation and Fracture of High Polymers, Definition and Scope of Treatment

The importance of a thorough understanding of the deformation behavior and the strength of polymeric engineering materials need not be emphasized. It is obvious to anyone who wants to use polymers as load bearing, weather-resisting, or deformable components or who wants to grind or degrade them. “Strength” and “fracture” of a sample are the positive and negative aspects of one and the same phenomenon, namely that of stress-biased material disintegration. The final step of such disintegration manifests itself as macroscopic failure of the component under use, be it a water pipe, a glass fiber reinforced oil tank, or a plastic grocery bag. The preceding intermediate steps — nonlinear deformation, environmental attack, and crack initiation and growth — are often less obvious, although they cause and/or constitute the damage developed within a loaded sample.