摘要
The UV irradiation can cause structural degradation of polymer and limit the applications of polymer as structural materials. In this work, the effects of UV irradiation on the mass transport and crack healing in poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) are studied. The transport behavior of methanol in the PMMA plates with and without the irradiation of UV can be described by anomalous transport. Both activation energies for the case I transport and for the velocity of the case II transport decrease with the increase of the UV-dose for the UV-irradiation on either one side or both sides of the PMMA plates. The UV irradiation reduces the fracture stress of the cracked PMMA plates and retards the recovery of the mechanical strength of the UV-damaged PMMA plates in methanol due to the UV-induced structural degradation. For the methanol-assisted healing of the irradiated, cracked PMMA plates, the recovery of fracture stress is proportional to a power function of the healing time.