Whilst there has been much success in modeling the linear and nonlinear rheology of monodisperse entangled linear polymers, progress in the constitutive modeling of polymeric materials continues to lag behind the needs of industry. Industrially sourced polymers are typically polydisperse (comprising a broad distribution of molecular weights), making their rheology more suitable for processing...
Whereas the collective response to external shear of soft colloids is frequently investigated [1,2], observations of shear-induced effects on the single particle level are still scarce. Therefore we investigated this intraparticle “brush deformation” of polybutadiene (PB) star and linear polymers by rheology and Rheo-SANS [3, 4]. Excellent agreement between experiment and theory with respect...
Quantitative understanding of the influence of environmental variables on the dynamic evolution of microstructure in polymeric fluids plays a central role in soft matter physics as well as the processing of a wide variety of soft materials. Atomistic simulation via non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) offer a viable alternative to experiment wherein the dynamics of individual...