Multiscale Modeling of Sub-Entanglement-Scale Chain Stretching and Strain Hardening in Deformed Polymeric Glasses

Using both coarse-grained (CG) and fine-grained (FG) simulations we show how strain hardening in polymeric glasses under uniaxial extension arises from highly stretched strands that form as the polymer chains deform subaffinely on increasing length scales as strain increases. The coarse-grained simulations are performed using the hybrid Brownian dynamics method (HBD) [Zou, W.; Larson, R. G. Soft Matter 2016, 3, 3853–3865] with 10–30...