Tumbling of polymers in semidilute solution under shear flow
Abstract
The tumbling dynamics of individual polymers in semidilute solution is studied by large-scale non-equilibrium mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations. We find that the tumbling time is equal to the non-equilibrium relaxation time of the polymer end-to-end distance along the flow direction and strongly depends on concentration. In addition, the normalized tumbling frequency as well as the widths of the alignment distribution functions for a given concentration-dependent Weissenberg number exhibit a weak concentration dependence in the cross-over regime from a dilute to a semidilute solution. For semidilute solutions a universal behavior is obtained. This is a consequence of screening of hydrodynamic interactions at polymer concentrations exceeding the overlap concentration.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1103.3567,
title = {Tumbling of polymers in semidilute solution under shear flow},
author = {C. -C. Huang and G. Sutmann and G. Gompper and R. G. Winkler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.3567},
year = {2011}
}