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Many water soluble polymers are chemically modified versions of insoluble base materials such as cellulose. A Flory-Huggins model is solved to determine the effects of heterogeneity in modification on the solubility of such polymers. It is…
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…
The structural arrest of a polymeric suspension might be driven by an increase of the cross--linker concentration, that drives the gel transition, as well as by an increase of the polymer density, that induces a glass transition. These…
In this note we present a scaling theory for the elasticity of olympic gels, i.e., gels where the elasticity is a consequence of topology only. It is shown that two deformation regimes exist. The first is the non affine deformation regime…
The covalent-like characteristics of hydrogen bonds offer a new perspective on intermolecular interactions. Here, using density functional theory and post-Hartree-Fock methods, we reveal that there are two bonding molecular orbitals (MOs)…
Polymeric turbulence, flows of fluids with dilute polymer additives at high Reynolds numbers, exhibits striking deviations from the Kolmogorovean behaviour of Newtonian turbulence. Recent experiments as well as simulations have uncovered a…
The turbulent energy cascade in dilute polymers solution is addressed here by considering a direct numerical simulation of homogeneous isotropic turbulence of a FENE-P fluid in a triply periodic box. On the basis of the DNS data, a scale by…
A linear stability analysis of the hydrodynamic equations with respect to the homogeneous cooling state is carried out to identify the conditions for stability of a granular gas of rough hard spheres. The description is based on the results…
We introduce a new measure of the structure of a liquid which is the softness of the mean-field potential developed by us earlier. We find that this softness is sensitive to small changes in the structure. We then study its correlation with…
In this paper we focus on the mechanical properties of oligomeric glasses (waxes), employing a microscopic model that provides, via numerical simulations, information about the shear modulus of such materials, the failure mechanism via…
A polymer network can imbibe water, forming an aggregate called hydrogel, and undergo large and inhomogeneous deformation with external mechanical constraint. Due to the large deformation, nonlinearity plays a crucial role, which also…
According to excess-entropy scaling, dynamic properties of liquids like viscosity and diffusion coefficient are determined by the entropy. This link between dynamics and thermodynamics is increasingly studied and of interest also for…
In a recent letter, Govaert et al. examined the relationship between strain hardening modulus $G_r$ and flow stress $\sigma_{flow}$ for five different glassy polymers. In each case, results for $G_r$ at different strain rates or different…
We have used computer simulation to study the collapse of a hydrophobic chain in water. We find that the mechanism of collapse is much like that of a first order phase transition. The evaporation of water in the vicinity of the polymer…
Granular packings display a wealth of mechanical features which are of widespread significance. One of these features is creep: the slow deformation under applied stress. Creep is common for many other amorphous materials such as many…
Friction experiments were conducted on hydrogel thin films sliding against a rigid sphere in a low velocity regime where molecular adsorption at the sliding interface sets the friction force, through a dissipative…
The entropy of a polymer confined in a curved surface and the elastic free energy of a membrane consisting of polymers are obtained by scaling analysis. It is found that the elastic free energy of the membrane has the form of the in-plane…
A homogenised model is developed to describe the interaction between aligned strings and an incompressible, viscous, Newtonian fluid. In the case of many strings, the ratio of string separation to domain width gives a small parameter which…
The experiment shows that small liquid droplets under the action of gravity and the Archimedes force move in the external viscous liquid practically according to the Stokes drag force equation, and not in accordance with the…
A polycrystalline solid is modelled as an ensemble of random irregular polyhedra filling the entire space occupied by the solid body, leaving no voids or flaws between them. Adjacent grains can slide with a relative velocity proportional to…