Modelling Polymers as Compressible Elastic Spheres in Couette Flow

Abstract

A model of polymer chains as compressible elastic spheres in flow is presented. The spherical polymer blobs are assumed to compress in simple Couette flow in accord with recent rheo-optic measurements on semi-dilute solutions. The experimentally determined decrease in radius with increasing shear rate is predicted by the model. Furthermore, the model predicts power law exponents for the viscosity-shear rate within the range of measured values for polymer chains.

Keywords

• Semi-dilute Polymer solutions
• Couette Flow
• compression
• modelling
• power law