Related papers: Chain retraction in highly entangled stretched pol…
We question the network affinity assumption in modeling chain orientations under polymer deformations, and the use of the stretch measure projected from the right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor (or non-affine micro-stretches derived from…
A simple theory for glassy polymeric mechanical response which accounts for large scale chain relaxation is presented. It captures the crossover from perfect-plastic response to strong strain hardening as the degree of polymerization $N$…
A thermodynamically related model is developed for describing elastic rubber-like behavior of amorphous and crystallizing polymers and demonstrated on example of simple extension. Both the “entropic” and “energetic”…
To study the cooling behavior and the glass transition of polymer melts in bulk and with free surfaces a coarse-grained weakly semi-flexible polymer model is developed. Based on a standard bead spring model with purely repulsive…
The scaling of the shear modulus near the gelation/vulcanization transition is explored heuristically and analytically. It is found that in a dense melt the effective chains of the infinite cluster have sizes that scale sub-linearly with…
We extend classical Flory-Rehner theory for the expansion and compression of porous materials such as cross-linked polymer networks. The theory includes volume exclusion, affinity with the solvent, and finite stretching of the polymer…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many other…
We analyze the conformational properties of polymer macromolecules in solutions in presence of extended structural obstacles of (fractal) dimension $\varepsilon_d$ causing the anisotropy of environment. Applying the pruned-enriched…
We report simulation results on melts of entangled linear polymers confined in a free-standing thin film. We study how the geometric constraints imposed by the confinement alter the entanglement state of the system compared to the…
This review describes the development and applications of multi-chain coarse-grained simulations for entangled polymer dynamics. The mean-field tube model has long served as the standard paradigm for describing the many-body entanglement…
Polymers are an effective test-bed for studying topological constraints in condensed matter due to a wide array of synthetically-available chain topologies. When linear and ring polymers are blended together, emergent rheological properties…
We present a Bethe approximation to study lattice models of linear polymers. The approach is variational in nature and based on the cluster variation method (CVM). We focus on a model with $(i)$ a nearest neighbor attractive energy…
By combining molecular dynamics simulations and topological analyses with scaling arguments, we obtain analytic expressions that quantitatively predict the entanglement length $N_e$, the plateau modulus $G$, and the tube diameter $a$ in…
The COMOFLO dynamic Monte Carlo algorithm is extended to enable the simulation of steady-state extensional rheology of dense melts for the first time ever. This significant advancement provides the ability to accurately capture the…
We propose a nonlinear extension of the standard tube model for semidilute solutions of freely-sliding semiflexible polymers. Non-affine filament deformations at the entanglement scale, the renormalisation of direct interactions by thermal…
Synthetic polymers have a distribution of chain lengths which can be characterized by dispersity, D. Macroscopic properties of polymers are influenced by chain mobility in the melt and manipulating D can significantly impact these…
The paper presents a short overview of the theoretical, numerical and experimental works on the critical behavior of a dilute polymer solution of long-flexible polymer chains confined in semi-infinite space restricted by a surface or in a…
In this study, we investigate the suitability of dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations to predict the dynamics of polymer chains in dilute polymer solutions, where the chain is represented by a set of beads connected by almost…
In this Perspective, I describe recent work on systems in which the traditional distinctions between (i) unentangled vs. well-entangled systems and (ii) melts vs. glasses seem least useful, and argue for the broader use in glassy polymer…
Soft matter systems are common in nature and make up nearly all the essential components necessary for life, from cells to the organelles within those cells. The ability of these soft materials to deform is crucial for the proper…