Effect of stretching-induced changes in hydrodynamic screening on coil-stretch hysteresis of unentangled polymer solutions

Abstract

Extensional rheometry and Brownian Dynamics simulations of flexible polymer solutions confirm predictions based on blob concepts that coil--stretch hysteresis in extensional flows increases with concentration, reaching a maximum at the critical overlap concentration $c^{\ast }$ before progressively vanishing in the semidilute regime. These observations demonstrate that chain stretching strengthens intermolecular hydrodynamic screening in dilute solutions, but weakens it in semidilute solutions. Flow can thus strongly modify the concentration dependence of viscoelastic properties of polymer solutions.

arXiv comment6 pages (twocolumn), 3 figures, supplementary material, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Single Polymer Dynamics for Molecular Rheology
• Universal dynamics of dilute and semidilute solutions of flexible linear polymers
• Shear thinning in dilute and semidilute solutions of polystyrene and DNA
• Dynamics and Rheology of Ring-Linear Blend Semidilute Solutions in Extensional Flow: Modeling and Molecular Simulations
• Heterogeneous interactions and polymer entropy decide organization and dynamics of chromatin domains
• Simulation of semidilute polymer solutions in planar extensional via conformationally averaged Brownian noise
• Polymer stretching in laminar and random flows: entropic characterization