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It is commonly accepted that in concentrated solutions or melts high-molecular weight polymers display random-walk conformational properties without long-range correlations between subsequent bonds. This absence of memory means, for…
The dynamics of randomly crosslinked liquids is addressed via a Rouse- and a Zimm-type model with crosslink statistics taken either from bond percolation or Erdoes-Renyi random graphs. While the Rouse-type model isolates the effects of the…
We briefly review the recent advances in the rheology of entangled polymers and identify emerging research trends and outstanding challenges, especially with respect to branched polymers. Emphasis is placed on the role of well-characterized…
Associative polymer networks have shown a major promise in fabrication of self-healing and responsive materials. The can also serve as simple models to study more complex biological systems where transient interactions play an important…
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…
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…
Attractive colloidal dispersions, suspensions of fine particles which aggregate and frequently form a space spanning elastic gel are ubiquitous materials in society with a wide range of applications. The colloidal networks in these…
We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…
The swelling dynamics of polymer gels are characterized by the (collective) diffusion coefficient $D$ of the polymer network. Here, we measure the temperature dependence of $D$ of polymer gels with controlled homogeneous network structures…
We study the conformation and dynamics of a single polymer chain that is pulled by a constant force applied at its one end with the other end free. Such a situation is relevant to the growing technology of manipulating individual…
Natural and synthetic multi-component gels display emergent properties, which implies that they are more than just the sum of their components. This warrants the investigation of the role played by inter-species interactions in shaping gel…
We use numerical simulations and an athermal quasi-static shear protocol to investigate the yielding of a model colloidal gel. Under increasing deformation, the elastic regime is followed by a significant stiffening before yielding takes…
The flow behaviors of polymer melt composed of short chains with ten beads between parallel plates are simulated by using a hybrid method of molecular dynamics and computational fluid dynamics. Three problems are solved: creep motion under…
We study the dynamics of an ideal polymer chain in a crowded, viscoelastic medium and in the presence of active forces. The motion of the centre of mass and of individual monomers is calculated. On time scales that are comparable to the…
Nonlinear elastic responses of short and stiff polyelectrolytes are investigated by dynamic simulations on a single molecule level. When a polyelectrolyte condensate undergoes a mechanical unfolding, two types of force-extension curves,…
We investigate the rheological properties of an assembly of inelastic (but frictionless) particles close to the jamming density using numerical simulation, in which uniform steady states with a constant shear rate $\dot\gamma$ is realized.…
We present a new simulation technique to study systems of polymers functionalized by reactive sites that bind/unbind forming reversible linkages. Functionalized polymers feature self-assembly and responsive properties that are unmatched by…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
Surface stress and surface energy are two fundamental parameters that determine the surface properties of any materials. While it is commonly believed that the surface stress and surface energy of liquids are identical, the relationship…
In this study we use non-equilibrium thermodynamics to systematically derive a phase-field model of a polyelectrolyte gel coupled to a hydrodynamic model for a salt solution surrounding the gel. The governing equations for the gel account…