Simulation of elastic rupture in extension of entangled monodisperse polymer melts.

Spontaneous breakup of extended monodisperse polymer melts.

We apply continuum mechanical based, numerical modeling to study the dynamics of extended monodisperse polymer melts during the relaxation. The computations are within the ideas of the microstructural "interchain pressure" theory. The computations show a delayed necking resulting in a rupture, as a result of small initial sample imperfections. These ruptures agree with experimental observations.

Elastic breakup in uniaxial extension of entangled polymer melts.

Five entangled melts, with the number of entanglements per chain ranging from 25 to 160, have been studied to illustrate how cohesive strength can be overcome in either continuous or interrupted extension (i.e., during or after uniaxial stretching). The internal elastic stress due to chain deformation from imposed strain appears to be the cause of the observed yielding behavior that reveals sca...

Basic characteristics of uniaxial extension rheology

We have carried out continuous and step uniaxial extension experiments on monodisperse and bidisperse styrene-butadiene random copolymers (SBR) to demonstrate that their nonlinear rheological behavior can be understood in terms of yielding through disintegration of the chain entanglement network and rubber-like rupture via non-Gaussian chain stretching leading to scission. In continuous extensi...

From Elastic Deformation to Terminal Flow of a Monodisperse Entangled Melt in Uniaxial Extension

Monte Carlo Simulation of Long Chain Polymer Melts: Crossover from Rouse to Reptation Dynamics

We present data of Monte Carlo simulations for monodisperse linear polymer chains in dense melts with degrees of polymerization between N = 16 and N = 512. The aim of this study is to investigate the crossover from Rouselike dynamics for short chains to reptation-like dynamics for long chains. To address this problem we calculate a variety of different quantities: standard mean-square displacem...