Study on the relationship between the mechanical properties and processing for self-reinforced polymers: A method for estimating the theoretical strength of UHMWPE fiber

Abstract In this paper, a method for estimating the theoretical strength of polymer fiber from experiments was developed. It is based on a kinetic equation for bond rupture of overstressed Taut tie molecules (TTM) and/or trapped entanglement chains (TEC) in the disordered domain and is established by using the coefficient of overstressed TTM and/or TEC in the disordered domain as a variable. After integration and simplification, a general correlation between the tensile strength with the primary molecular weight, the processing condition, the testing condition and durability was obtained. When the draw ratio of processing and the primary molecular weight are extrapolated to infinity, a general relation between the actual tensile strength and the theoretical strength, the fraction of TTM and/or TEC ( X e3 ) in the disordered domain and the thermal fluctuation was obtained. Based on the relation, a method for estimating the theoretical strength of the polymer chain from the measurement of the actual tensile strength and the fraction of TTM and/or TEC is proposed. The theoretical strength of a PE chain was estimated by the method to be 30–40 Gpa.