Interactions between polymers and their surrounding environment or exposure to external fields may influence the mechanical material properties, lead to damage evolution or provoke degradation processes. Strong couplings, multiple time scales and pronounced gradients make the experimental characterization, the constitutive representation and the numerical simulation of these phenomena to big challenges.
This colloquium aims to crosslink different approaches. To this end, (i) thermo-mechanical couplings, (ii) liquid or gas diffusion and (iii) associated chemical reactions are discussed.
Electro-magneto-mechanical couplings will also be addressed to enlarge the scientific discussion about current challenges for both the understanding and the modelling of the multiphysics in solid polymers. The colloquium will focus on unreinforced polymers. Special interest will be paid on fully-coupled approaches.