COMPLAS 2023

Modelling mechanochemical reactions in epoxy resins using hybrid QM/MM/MD approaches.

  • Suncana-Smith, Ana (Computational Advanced Materials and Processes (CAMP) & PULS Group)
  • Wick, Christian R. (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen Nürnberg)

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Epoxy resins are important thermosetting polymers in our everyday life with a large variety of applications, e.g. as structural materials in airplanes, as coatings, flooring materials or adhesives. Therefore, a detailed prediction of the mechanical properties of epoxies are crucial for their design and utilization. With the aim to understand these complex materials at the molecular scale, we investigate the formation and the mechanochemical response of epoxy resins, including the reactions taking place during curing and under tensile load, by means of quantum chemistry [1] and hybrid Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. We present a Block chemistry based AMBER force field approach [2,3] which allows the balanced description of all states of curing and facilitates an improved MD based curing procedure without the necessity of using alchemical pre-cursors. Building upon our cured epoxy samples, we are developing an on-the-fly hybrid QM/MM/MD ansatz to identify bond rupture events and subsequent chemical reactions in bulk epoxies to improve our understanding of the mechanochemical behavior of these materials during fracture. [1] C.R. Wick, E. Topraksal, D.M. Smith, A.-S. Smith, Forces Mech.