APPLICATION OF A NEW STRUCTURAL THEORY TO POLYMERS .2. TRANSITION-STATES FOR AMORPHOUS POLYMERS AND COPOLYMERS

The authors first review the theory and its prediction of a thermomechanical equation of state. Second, we generalize the concept of the thermomechanical 'transition' and adopt (intuitively) one particular choice of S (M), where M is polymer molecular weight. Numerous predictions which follow from this are then given and these are successfully compared with abundant data from the literature. The ability of these relationships to unify a wide variety of data makes them extremely useful and tends to validate the choice of S (M) as well as the theory itself. The theory is thereby demonstrated to be relevant to polymers in their glassy state as well as in their rubbery state.