Prediction of chain length effects in elongational flows of dilute polymer solutions by successive fine graining. (English) Zbl 1116.76315

Sunthar, P.; Prakash, J. Ravi

ANZIAM J. 46C, Proc. 2004, C320-C335 (2005).

Summary: A new computational tool for predicting the rheological properties of a dilute solution of polymers in q-conditions is presented. Within this approach, the polymer is modelled as a bead spring chain with finitely extensible springs and fluctuating hydrodynamic interactions incorporated. The novelty of the method lies in obtaining predictions for a very large Kuhn step chain by extrapolating results of a series of bead-springs representations to the bead-rod limit. This provides the computational advantage of using smaller number of modes in a coarse grained description and better accuracy in the extrapolated result. The effect of chain length in the unraveling dynamics of a polymer in elongational flow is examined using this approach.

MSC:

76A10	Viscoelastic fluids
76U05	General theory of rotating fluids
82D60	Statistical mechanical studies of polymers

Keywords:

dilute polymer solutions; elongational flow; DNA; flexible macromolecules; bead-spring chain; Brownian dynamics