Elastic modulus of in ‐ situ composites of a liquid crystalline polymer and polycarbonate

Abstract In this paper, we model the elastic modulus of in ‐ situ composite fibers from polymer blends where a fibrous liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) phase is induced by drawing. We propose a composite model to account for the change of the elastic moduli of the reinforcing LCP phase with the draw ratio of the composite fibers. We envisage the LCP phase as a composite of a perfectly oriented chain aggregate and a randomly oriented chain aggregate which are connected in series. We then derive equations for the longitudinal and the transverse elastic moduli of the composite fibers based on the well‐known Halpin‐Tsai equation and the composite model of the reinforcing LCP phase. Using this approach, we are able to make a number of predictions including the transverse elastic modulus and mechanical anisotropy. Our results show that theoretical predictions of the longitudinal elastic modulus agree fairly well with experimental results for polycarbonate/Vectra composites. The proposed modulus equations will be useful in providing guidelines for fabrication and applications of this new class of polymeric materials.