English Abstract
Application of the Platform for Designing High Functional Materials OCTA to Elastomer Blend Materials
Naoki Kobayashi
Polymer Analysis & CAE Group, Material Science Lab., Mitsui Chemicals, Inc., Chiba, Japan
Nippon Gomu Kyokaishi, (2004), 77(4), 136-139 General Review in Japanese.


Abstract
OCTA is an integrated multi scale computer simulation platform for polymeric materials design. OCTA consists of four simulation programs and a common graphical user interface. Applicability of the OCTA was investigated to linear homo polymer blend systems such as heterophasic polyolefin-based elastomer blend systems. A morphology simulator SUSHI which utilized a mean field simulation system based on the self consistent field theory, was employed to predict the morphology of bulk materials which have multiphase structure, binary Polypropylene (PP) / Ethylene-Propylene-Rubber (EPR) and ternary PP / EPR / Polyethylene (PE) polymer blend systems. And the elastic modulus was predicted by MUFFIN/Elastica which is a part of multi phase dynamics simulator based on the finite element method, using the morphology of elastomer blend systems calculated by SUSHI. Predicted moduli show very good agreement to literature data of elastomer blend systems. Zooming-simulation scheme, combination of any simulation models with different scale, is a successful method for designing soft materials.

Keywords:
Morphology, Modulus, Computer simulation, SCF, FEM
Close