Phase field modeling of damage in glassy polymers

Failure mechanisms in amorphous polymers are usually separated into two types, shear yielding and crazing due to the differences in the yield surface. Experiments show that the yield surface follows a pressure modified von Mises relation for shear yielding but this relation does not hold during crazing failure. In the past different yield conditions were used to represent each type of failure. Here, we show that the same damage model can be used to study failure under shear yielding and crazing conditions. The simulations show that different yield surfaces are obtained for craze and shear yielding if the microstructure is included explicitly in the simulations. In particular the breakdown of the pressure modified von Mises relation during crazing can be related to the presence of voids and other defects in the sample.