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The mechanical properties of a polymeric network containing both crosslinks and sliplinks (entanglements) are studied using a multi-chain Brownian dynamics simulation. We coarse-grain at the level of chain segments connecting consecutive…
While the dynamics of polymer chains in equilibrium media is well understood by now, the polymer dynamics in active non-equilibrium environments can be very different. Here we study the dynamics of polymers in a viscous medium containing…
In order to study rheological properties of gelling systems in dilute solution, we investigate the viscosity and the normal stresses in the Zimm model for randomly crosslinked monomers. The distribution of cluster topologies and sizes is…
We study the shearing rheology of dense suspensions of elastic capsules, taking aggregation-free red blood cells as a physiologically relevant example. Particles are non-Brownian and interact only via hydrodynamics and short-range repulsive…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
Vitrimers are polymer networks that, thanks to covalent bond exchange, combine desirable properties of thermoplastic and thermosets, such as flowability and insolubility. For this reason, vitrimers are considered to be good candidates for a…
We report a computer simulation study of a model gel-former obtained by modifying the three-body interactions of the Stillinger-Weber potential for silicon. This modification reduces the average coordination number and consequently shifts…
Ring polymers are an intriguing class of polymers with unique physical properties, and understanding their behavior is important for developing accurate theoretical models. In this study, we investigate the effect of chain stiffness and…
We investigate the universality of entanglement kinetics in polymer melts. We compare predictions of a recently developed constitutive equation for disentanglement to molecular dynamics simulations of both united-atom polyethylene and…
Soft supramolecular materials are promising for the design of innovative and highly tunable adhesives. These materials are composed of polymer chains functionalized by strongly interacting moieties, sometimes called "stickers". In order to…
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…
We present an extensive analysis of the relaxation dynamics of entangled linear polymer melts via long-time molecular dynamics simulations of a generic bead-spring model. We study the mean-squared displacements, the autocorrelation function…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
Hybrid molecular dynamics/Monte Carlo simulations used to study melts of unentangled, thermoreversibly associating supramolecular polymers. In this first of a series of papers, we describe and validate a model that is effective in…
The swelling kinetics of charged polymer gels reflect the complex competition among elastic, mixing, and ionic contributions. Here, we used dynamic light scattering to investigate the collective diffusion coefficient of model gels, whose…
The time-dependent stress relaxation for a Rouse model of a crosslinked polymer melt is completely determined by the spectrum of eigenvalues of the connectivity matrix. The latter has been computed analytically for a mean-field distribution…
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…
We study energy relaxation in a phenomenological model for polymer built from rheological considerations: a one dimensional nonlinear lattice with dissipative couplings. These couplings are well known in polymer's community to be possibly…
Packings of macroscopic granular chains capture some of the essential aspects of molecular polymer systems and have been suggested as a paradigm to understand the physics on a molecular scale. However, here we demonstrate that the…
From understanding the sand on the beach to the foam on your beer, soft sphere simulations have been crucial to the study of the amorphous world around us. However, many of the materials we interact with on a daily basis aren't comprised of…