Related papers: Dewetting dynamics of sheared thin polymer films: …
Confined geometries offer useful and experimentally amenable mechanical testing arrangements in which to study the molecular and micro-structural processes which govern plastic yield in stress environments dominated by hydrostatic pressure…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the effects of deformation on the segmental dynamics in an aging polymer glass. Individual particle trajectories are decomposed into a series of discontinuous hops, from which we obtain…
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of strictly two-dimensional (2D) polymer melts and thin polymer films in a slit geometry of thickness of the order of the radius of gyration. We find that the dynamics of the 2D melt is…
The dynamic and static properties of a supercooled (non-entangled) polymer melt are investigated via molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The system is confined between two completely smooth and purely repulsive walls. The wall-to-wall…
The rheological behavior of polymer melts is strongly influenced by parameters such as chain length, chain stiffness, and architecture. In particular, shear thinning, characterized by a power-law decrease in shear viscosity with increasing…
Much recent effort has focused on glassy and jamming properties of spherical particles. Very little is known about such phenomena for non-spherical particles, and we take a first step by studying ellipses. We find important differences…
Complex flow fields govern the deformation of polymers in various manufacturing processes. However, high flow rates may trigger reaction events (i.e., bond breaking or undesirable reaction of mechanophores) in raw polymeric materials,…
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
The effects of a driven fast-oscillating spinneret on the bending instability of electrified jets, leading to the formation of spiral structures in electrospinning experiments with charged polymers, are explored by means of extensive…
Droplet coalescence is ubiquitous in nature and the same time key to various technologies, such as inkjet printing. Here, we report on the coalescence of polymer droplets with different chain lengths coalescing on substrates of different…
We study the deformation of nano--scale polymer films which are subject to external bending forces by means of computer simulation. The polymer is represented by a generalized bead--spring--model, intended to reproduce characteristic…
The interface between two immiscible polymers, polystyrene (PS) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), was studied by neutron reflectivity and dewetting by using free PS chains and PDMS brushes. Unexpectedly, we found that the PS chains diffuse…
Molecular dynamics simulations of a short-chain polymer melt between two brush-covered surfaces under shear have been performed. The end-grafted polymers which constitute the brush have the same chemical properties as the free chains in the…
Molecular dynamics simulations are carried out to investigate the dynamic behavior of the slip length in thin polymer films confined between atomically smooth thermal surfaces. For weak wall-fluid interactions, the shear rate dependence of…
Experiments have investigated shape changes of polymer films induced by asymmetric swelling by a chemical vapor. Inspired by recent work on the shaping of elastic sheets by non-Euclidean metrics [Y. Klein, E. Efrati, and E. Sharon, Science…
Complex mixing and magnetic field generation occurs within stellar interiors particularly where there is a strong shear flow. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of these processes, it is necessary to study the complex dynamics of shear…
We consider the dynamic wetting and dewetting processes of films and droplets of complex liquids on planar surfaces, focusing on the case of colloidal suspensions, where the particle interactions can be sufficiently attractive to cause…
We measure the isothermal rejuvenation of stable glass films of poly(styrene) and poly(methylmethacrylate). We demonstrate that the propagation of the front responsible for the transformation to a supercooled-liquid state can serve as a…
We report experimental observation of the shear thickening oscillation, i.e. the spontaneous macroscopic oscillation in the shear flow of severe shear thickening fluid. The shear thickening oscillation is caused by the interplay between the…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the occurrence of inhomogeneous shear flows in soft jammed materials. We use rough walls to impose a simple shear flow and study the athermal motion of jammed assemblies of soft…