A NEW APPROACH TO THE DESCRIPTION OF THE DEFORMATION KINETICS AND RELAXATION OF MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES OF ORIENTED POLYMERS

The reduction of Young's modulus and stress as well as the creep rate of highly oriented polymers with different chemical structure has been investigated. The kinetics of these processes are described by Arrhen ius-type equations having the same activation parameters. The deformat ion and relaxation processes were assumed identical in their physical nature and functions of thermal fluctuation. Evidence for this assumpt ion was obtained by investigating spectroscopically excited extended i nteratomic bonds of the macromolecules. The generation of excited bond s was found to determine the kinetics of these macroscopic processes i n polymers.