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Polymer Science Commons

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2006

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Polymer Science

Nonquiescent Relaxation In Entangled Polymer Liquids After Step Shear, Shi-Qing Wang, Sham Ravindranath, Pouyan Boukany, Michael Olechnowicz, Roderic P. Quirk, Jimmy Mays Nov 2006

Nonquiescent Relaxation In Entangled Polymer Liquids After Step Shear, Shi-Qing Wang, Sham Ravindranath, Pouyan Boukany, Michael Olechnowicz, Roderic P. Quirk, Jimmy Mays

College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

Large step shear experiments revealed through particle tracking velocimetry that entangled polymeric liquids display either internal macroscopic movements upon shear cessation or rupturelike behavior during shear. Visible inhomogeneous motions were detected in five samples with the number of entanglements per chain ranging from 20 to 130 at amplitudes of step strain as low as 135%.


Interfacial Stick-Slip Transition In Simple Shear Of Entangled Melts, Pouyan E. Boukany, Prashant Tapadia, Shi-Qing Wang Oct 2006

Interfacial Stick-Slip Transition In Simple Shear Of Entangled Melts, Pouyan E. Boukany, Prashant Tapadia, Shi-Qing Wang

College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

This article describes a systematic investigation of a discontinuous interfacial stick-slip transition (SST) in simple shear of monodisperse entangled 1,4-polybutadiene (PBD) and polyisoprene (PIP) melts with different molecular weights and architecture, using a specially designed controlled-force shear rheometer. The magnitude of the transition is found to be determined by the level of chain entanglement. Specifically, the dependence of extrapolation length b on molecular weight as b similar to M-w(3.4) and of the melt viscosity as b similar to eta is consistent with the observations based on capillary rheometric studies [X. Yang et al., Rheol. Acta 37, 415-423 (1998)]. The interfacial …


Porous Fiber Formation In Polymer-Solvent System Undergoing Solvent Evaporation, Pratyush Dayal, Thein Kyu Aug 2006

Porous Fiber Formation In Polymer-Solvent System Undergoing Solvent Evaporation, Pratyush Dayal, Thein Kyu

College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

Temporal evolution of the fiber morphology during dry spinning has been investigated in the framework of Cahn-Hilliard equation [J. Chem. Phys. 28, 258 (1958)] pertaining to the concentration order parameter or volume fraction given by the Flory-Huggins free energy of mixing [P. J. Flory, Principles of Polymer Chemistry (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1953), p. 672] in conjunction with the solvent evaporation rate. To guide the solvent evaporation induced phase separation, equilibrium phase diagram of the starting polymer solution was established on the basis of the Flory-Huggins free energy of mixing. The quasi-steady-state approximation has been adopted to account for …


Breakup Of Spiral And Concentric Ringed Spherulites In Polymer Crystallization, Haijun Xu, Hao-Wen Chiu, Yoshifumi Okabe, Thein Kyu Jul 2006

Breakup Of Spiral And Concentric Ringed Spherulites In Polymer Crystallization, Haijun Xu, Hao-Wen Chiu, Yoshifumi Okabe, Thein Kyu

College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

Recently, the breakup of spiral and concentric ringed spherulites has been observed experimentally in isothermal crystallization of poly(vinylidene fluoride) in its blends with ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer. To elucidate the phenomenon of spiral breakup in polymer spherulites, a theoretical simulation has been undertaken in the framework of the phase field model of solidification based on time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations (TDGL model C) pertaining to the conserved concentration and nonconserved phase field order parameters. The concentration order parameter was described in terms of the Landau-type potential, while the crystal order parameter was expressed in terms of an asymmetric double-well potential to account …


Crystal-Liquid Crystal Binary Phase Diagrams, P Dayal, Ra Matkar, Thein Kyu Jun 2006

Crystal-Liquid Crystal Binary Phase Diagrams, P Dayal, Ra Matkar, Thein Kyu

College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

We propose a new theoretical scheme for the binary phase diagrams of crystal-liquid crystal mixtures by a combination of a phase field model of solidification, the Flory-Huggins theory for liquid-liquid mixing and Maier-Saupe-McMillan (FH-MSM) model for nematic and smectic liquid crystal orderings. The phase field theory describes the crystal phase transition of anisotropic organic crystal and/or side chain liquid crystalline polymer crystals while the FH-MSM model explains isotropic, nematic and smectic-A phase transitions. Self-consistent calculations reveal several possible phase diagram topologies of the binary crystal-liquid crystal mixtures. The calculated phase diagrams were found to accord well to the reported experimental …


Coupling Between Lysozyme And Trehalose Dynamics: Microscopic Insights From Molecular-Dynamics Simulations, Taner E. Dirama, Joseph E. Curtis, Gustavo A. Carri, Alexei P. Sokolov Jan 2006

Coupling Between Lysozyme And Trehalose Dynamics: Microscopic Insights From Molecular-Dynamics Simulations, Taner E. Dirama, Joseph E. Curtis, Gustavo A. Carri, Alexei P. Sokolov

College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

We have carried out molecular-dynamics simulations on fully flexible all-atom models of the protein lysozyme immersed in trehalose, an effective biopreservative, with the purpose of exploring the nature and extent of the dynamical coupling between them. Our study shows a strong coupling over a wide range of temperatures. We found that the onset of anharmonic behavior was dictated by changes in the dynamics and relaxation processes in the trehalose glass. The physical origin of protein-trehalose coupling was traced to the hydrogen bonds formed at the interface between the protein and the solvent. Moreover, protein-solvent hydrogen bonding was found to control …