Analysis of The Relationship Between Optical Property and Deformation Behavior of Polymeric Materials by Network Model

Polymeric materials are used in several parts because their flexibility, low cost and excellent in processing. It is important to understand the some properties of polymeric materials for optimized design. The properties of polymeric materials are strongly influenced by meso-scale (10^-9-10^-3 m) structure such as entanglement, molecular weight distribution, and orientation, etc. But it is difficult to investigate the relationship by experimental methods because the structures are micro scale. For this reason, the detail relationship between the properties and meso-scale structure is not clear. Computing power increases and increases, therefore it is possible to calculate behaviors of molecular chains. In this study, it is aimed to clear this relationship by the simulation. Mechanical properties are one of the important properties of polymeric materials. Therefore, the relationship between the mechanical properties and meso-scale properties has been investigated. But optical property is also important as well as mechanical property. In this study, we propose simulation method to investigate the relationship between the optical property and meso-scale structure. Polymeric materials are modeled by networks of molecular chain considered the meso-scale structure. In addition, polymeric materials are birefringence material. When the polymeric materials are elongated, refraction indexes of several directions become different values. A modeling of this change of refraction index is proposed. From these modeling, the light intensity distribution in a cross-section of square optical-waveguide is obtained. Then, the relationship between the change of structure of molecular chain scale and light intensity is investigated.