Modeling the thermo-mechanical behavior and constrained recovery performance of cold-programmed amorphous shape-memory polymers

The low recovery stress has limited utilizing shape-memory polymers (SMPs) as actuators. In this work, we demonstrate that the resultant recovery stress of amorphous SMPs can be significantly increased through cold programming. A three-dimensional model is formulated to describe the thermo-mechanical behavior and shape-memory performance of amorphous polymers in large deformation. The constitutive relationship is derived based on the...