Amorphous polymer materials and polymer-based nanocomposites have a wide range of practical applications and are of great potential for creating materials with predetermined unique properties. But the main fundamental problem is to establish the relationship between the macroscopic behavior of such disordered and nanostructured systems and their microscopic properties. Recent studies have shown that the frequency dependence of the nonlinear elastic moduli is very sensitive to the microscopic structure of the material, therefore the investigation of the nonlinear viscoelastic properties of amorphous polymer materials and polymer-based nanocomposites is of considerable interest.
To address this problem, the sector performs an integrated set of complementary studies, including the collection and analysis of experimental data, numerical modeling, and construction of theoretical models, in three closely related areas:
- Molecular-dynamics study of the glass transition process of amorphous bodies and theoretical study of nonlinear viscoelastic properties at the microscopic level;
- Theoretical studies of the dynamics of nanostructured materials and the effect of non-affine deformations on viscoelastic properties of amorphous materials with nanoparticles;
- Experimental studies of nonlinear viscoelastic properties of polymeric and nanocomposite materials and nonlinear strain waves in waveguides made of these materials. Development of macroscopic continuum models.