Related papers: Perspectives on the viscoelasticity and flow behav…
The non-linear response of entangled polymers to shear flow is complicated. Its current understanding is framed mainly as a rheological description in terms of the complex viscosity. However, the full picture requires an assessment of the…
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…
Significant challenges exist in the nonlinear extensional rheology of entangled polymers. With simulations, we show that the key to understanding this problem is to recognize the existence and importance of a strain-induced crossover from…
We numerically and analytically analyze the startup continuous shear rheology of heavily entangled rigid rod polymer fluids based on our self-consistent, force-level theory of anharmonic tube confinement. The approach is simplified by…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
The classical rheological theories of entangled polymeric liquids are built upon two pillars: Gaussian statistics of entanglement strands and the assumption that the stress arises exclusively from the change of intramolecular configuration…
Ring polymers remain a major challenge to our current understanding of polymer dynamics. Experimental results are difficult to interpret because of the uncertainty in the purity and dispersity of the sample. Using both equilibrium and…
The non-stretching approximation of polymer rheology simplifies a constitutive equation but fundamentally changes its behavior in fast flows, and the circumstances under which fast flows emerge cannot always be predicted a-priori. In this…
We employ a first principles, force-level approach to self-consistently construct the anharmonic tube confinement field for entangled fluids of rigid needles and for primitive-path (PP) level chains in two limiting situations where chain…
We introduce a class of continuum mechanical models aimed at describing the behaviour of viscoelastic fluids by incorporating concepts originated in the theory of solid plasticity. Within this class, even a simple model with constant…
In this chapter we review concepts and theories of polymer dynamics. We think of it as an introduction to the topic for scientists specializing in other subfields of statistical mechanics and condensed matter theory, so, for the readers…
We propose and analyze a mathematical model of the mechanics of gels, consisting of the laws of balance of mass and linear momentum. We consider a gel to be an immiscible and incompressible mixture of a nonlinearly elastic polymer and a…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
Giant micelles are elongated, polymer-like objects created by the self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules (such as detergents) in solution. Giant micelles are typically flexible, and can become highly entangled even at modest concentrations.…
Numerical simulations of vesicle suspensions are performed in two dimensions to study their dynamical and rheological properties. An hybrid method is adopted, which combines a mesoscopic approach for the solvent with a curvature-elasticity…
We present a theoretical framework for the linear and nonlinear visco-elastic properties of reversibly crosslinked networks of semiflexible polymers. In contrast to affine models where network strain couples to the polymer end-to-end…
This study focuses on comparing the individual polymer chain dynamics in an entangled polymeric liquid under different shear and extension rates. Polymer chains under various shear rates and extension rates were simulated using a…
We here present two simplified models aimed at describing the long-term, irregular behaviours observed in the rheological response of certain complex fluids, such as periodic oscillations or chaotic-like variations. Both models exploit the…
Entangled polymers are deformed by a strong shear flow. The shape of the polymer, called the form factor, is measured by small angle neutron scattering. However, the real-space molecular structure is not directly available from the…
As a stiff polymer tumbles in shear flow, it experiences compressive viscous forces that can cause it to buckle and undergo a sequence of morphological transitions with increasing flow strength. We use numerical simulations to uncover the…