An Theoretical Model and Numerical Study on the Large Deformation of Polyelectrolyte Gels

The proposed project aims to develop an improved multiphysics model and new numerical scheme to study the coupled large deformation and solvents/ions transport phenomena in polyelectrolyte gels. First, a previous model for chemo-mechanical coupling will be improved to incorporate the effects of junction functionality, chain entanglements of polymer networks and convective transport of species. Secondly, an Eulerian (spatial) frame-based variational scheme will be developed for the formulation of the discrete coupled governing equations, and associated numerical procedure will be further implemented in the commercial package ABAQUS via a user-defined element (UEL). The improved multiphysics model and new numerical approach will be demonstrated by analyzing several phenomena, such as swelling, draining and indentation. Also, a comparison between the proposed and the previous models will be made. This proposed project will be expected to build a platform to study diverse transient concurrent process of large deformation and species transport in hydrogels.