Related papers: Stiffness of polymer chains
The constraints imposed by nano- and microscale confinement on the conformational degrees of freedom of thermally fluctuating biopolymers are utilized in contemporary nano-devices to specifically elongate and manipulate single chains. A…
We investigate the mechanical properties of amorphous polymers by means of coarse-grained simulations and nonaffine lattice dynamics theory. A small increase of polymer chain bending stiffness leads first to softening of the material, while…
The present paper investigates the extension behavior of a wormlike chain with varied persistence length under the confinement of a cylindrical tube. Based on Odijk theory of a confined polymer chain, we have developed a theory which can…
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…
We use the worm-like chain model to analytically calculate the linear response of a grafted semiflexible polymer to a uniform force field. The result is a function of the bending stiffness, the temperature, the total contour length, and the…
The statistical mechanics of a ribbon polymer made up of two semiflexible chains is studied using both analytical techniques and simulation. The system is found to have a crossover transition at some finite temperature, from a type of short…
In this paper we investigate the conformation statistics of a Gaussian chain embedded in a medium of finite size, in the presence of quenched random obstacles. The similarities and differences between the case of random obstacles and the…
A formula of steady shear viscosity is derived by introducing a model to describe the dynamics of physically cross-linked network (physical gel), and successfully analyzes the shear-thickening behavior observed in HEUR aqueous solutions by…
Effects of multi-gradient fields on the transport of a polymer chain have been investigated by using generalized Langevin dynamics simulations. We observe that the natural frequency of tumbling follows $Wi^{0.66}$ scaling, where $Wi$ is the…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of flexible polymers confined in a square microchannel and exposed to a Poiseuille flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. The chain length and the flow strength are…
Recent advances in single macromolecule experiments have sparked interest in the ensemble dependence of force-extension relations. The thermodynamic limit may not be attainable for such systems, that leads to inequivalence of the…
Active polymers possess numerous unique properties that are quite different from those observed in the system of small active molecule due to the intricate interplay between their activity and topological constraints. This study focuses on…
We propose a continuum theory to model the Mullins effect, which is ubiquitously observed in polymer composites. In the theory, the softening of the materials during the stretching process is accounted for by considering the delamination of…
We study jamming in model freely rotating polymers as a function of chain length $N$ and bond angle $\theta_0$. The volume fraction at jamming, $\phi_J(\theta_0)$, is minimal for rigid-rod-like chains ($\theta_0 = 0$), and increases…
Constitutive modeling of dielectric elastomers has been of long standing interest in mechanics. Over the last two decades rigorous constitutive models have been developed that couple the electrical response of these polymers with large…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
While nearly all theoretical and computational studies of entangled polymer melts have focused on uniform samples, polymer synthesis routes always result in some dispersity, albeit narrow, of distribution of molecular weights (D_M=M_w/M_n ~…
The effects of entanglement and chain orientation on strain hardening in glassy polymers are separated by examining mixtures of chains with different lengths. Simulations show that the orientation of a molecule of a given chain length is…
The dynamics of loop formation by linear polymer chains has been a topic of several theoretical/experimental studies. Formation of loops and their opening are key processes in many important biological processes. Loop formation in flexible…
Using molecular dynamic simulation, we study the stretching of an adsorbed homopolymer in a poor solvent with one end held at a distance $z_e$ from the substrate. We measure the vertical force $f$ on the end of the chain as a function of…