Molecular destruction of polymers at the apex of a major crack

We employed infrared spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy of deflected total internal reflection to study the rupture of polymer macromolecular chains (polyethylene and polypropylene) at the apex of a growing crack. It was shown that the break concentration at the crack surface is of the same order of magnitude as the total concentration of chemical bonds in the polymer; molecular rupture occurs not only at the apex itself but also at some distance from it. The dependence of the break concentration on the distance from the crack apex was measured. The observed patterns were related to the experimentally determined external-load distribution function for individual chemical bonds near the crack apex.I. F. Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leningrad. Translated from Mekhanika Polimerov, No. 4, pp. 621–625, July–August, 1972.