ABSTRACT
Polymeric glasses are some of the most important advanced engineering materials, because of their unique combination of thermo-mechanical properties and their ability to be economically processed into complex shapes. Because of their engineering significance, the physical behavior of polymeric glasses has been extensively studied over the last 100 years. Although much is known, a fundamental understanding of the origin of the thermo-physical behavior of polymeric glasses is far from complete. In fact, the glassy state, of which polymeric glasses are one of the most important examples, is considered one of the outstanding problems in condensed matter physics [1,2]. Even if the objective is only a phenomenological description rather than fundamental understanding, currently there is no constitutive model that can capture the diversity of thermophysical behaviors exhibited by polymeric glasses. However, there are a number of constitutive models that can describe at least limited portions of the observed thermo-mechanical response of polymeric glasses (see Chapter 14 for a more detailed discussion of various constitutive models that have been proposed to describe polymeric glasses).
