The Energy Barriers Model for the Physical Description of the Viscoelasticity of Synthetic Polymers: Application to the Uniaxial Orientational Drawing of Polyamide Films

Abstract The master equation describing the viscoelastic behavior of oriented polymer materials has been obtained based on the idea of the existence of various stable macromolecular conformations separated with potential barriers. It is shown that the geometric size of the molecular system is changed in stepwise manner upon the transition over the potential barrier as a consequence of birth or absorption of the quantum of the absolute deformation. The applicability of the model has been illustrated for different regimes of deformation of synthetic fibers. The accord between experiment and theory is demonstrated by using the example of polyamide-6. Keywords: active conformational elementsenergetic barrierpolyamide-6polymer filmsquantum of deformationviscoelastic properties Acknowledgments The paper is dedicated to Professor Boris M. Ginzburg on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The authors would like to thank Professor V. A. Marikhin for his help and discussions. The experimental part of the work was carried out in St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design and in A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dedicated to Prof. B. M. Ginzburg on his 75th anniversary.