Highly extensible supramolecular elastomers are prepared from ABA triblock‐type copolymers bearing glassy end blocks and a long soft middle block with multiple hydrogen bonds. The copolymer used is polystyrene‐b‐[poly(butyl acrylate)‐co‐polyacrylamide]‐b‐polystyrene (S‐Ba‐S), which is synthesized via reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Tensile tests reveal that the breaking elongation (εb) increases with an increase in the middle block molecular weight (Mmiddle). Especially, the largest S‐Ba‐S with Mmiddle of 3140k, which is synthesized via high‐pressure RAFT polymerization, achieves εb of over 2000% with a maximum tensile stress of 3.6 MPa, while the control sample without any middle block hydrogen bonds, polystyrene‐b‐poly(butyl acrylate)‐b‐polystyrene with Mmiddle of 2780k, is merely a viscous material due to the large volume fraction of soft block. Thus, incorporation of hydrogen bonds into the large molecular weight soft middle block is found to be beneficial to prepare supramolecular elastomers attaining high extensibility and sufficiently large stress generation ability simultaneously. This outcome is probably due to concerted combination of entropic changes and internal potential energy changes originating from the dissociation of multiple hydrogen bonds by elongation.
The fatigue crack growth behavior resulting from a single overload is investigated. In order to clarify the mechanism of overload
on fatigue crack growth, the processes of crack closure and opening and their stress levels are monitored by strain gages
placed on the back surface of specimens, and the fracture surface morphologies are examined by the microfractography. Experimental
results may be used to explain quantitatively the mechanisms of retardation and delayed retardation after a single overload. 相似文献