Multiscale modelling of thermally stressed superelastic polyimide

Abstract

Many thermo-mechanical processes, such as thermal expansion and stress relaxation, originate at the atomistic scale. We develop a sequential multiscale approach to study thermally stressed superelastic polyimide to explore these effects. The continuum-scale smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model is coupled with atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) through constitutive modelling, where thermo-mechanical properties and equations of state are derived from MD simulations. The results are verified through benchmark problems of heat transfer. Finally, we analyse the insulating capabilities of superelastic polyimide by simulating the thermal response of an aluminium plate. The result shows a considerable reduction in the thermal stress, strain and temperature field development in the aluminium plate when superelastic polyimide is used as an insulator. The present work demonstrates the effectiveness of the multi-scale method in capturing thermo-mechanical interactions in superelastic polyimide.