Effects of Coarse-Graining on Molecular Simulations of Mechanical Properties of Glassy Polymers

We simulate the mechanical response of polystyrene glasses using the models with different levels of coarse-graining but the same structural correlations at thermal equilibrium. The stress level during the strain hardening at the same temperature and deformation rate decreases as the degree of coarse-graining increases, reflecting that the configurational average of fine-grained structure leads to a smoother coarse-grained potential with lower...