Excluded volume effects on the structure of a linear polymer under shear flow

The effect of excluded volume interactions on the structure of a polymer in shear flow is investigated by Brownian Dynamics simulations for chains with size $30\leq N\leq 300$. The main results concern the structure factor $S({\bf q})$ of chains of N=300 Kuhn segments, observed at a reduced shear rate $\beta=\dot{\gamma}\tau=3.2$, where $\dot{\gamma}$ is the bare shear rate and $\tau$ is the longest relaxation time of the chain. At low q, where anisotropic global deformation is probed, the chain form factor is shown to match the form factor of the continuous Rouse model under shear at the same reduced shear rate, computed here for the first time in a wide range of wave vectors. At high q, the chain structure factor evolves towards the isotropic equilibrium power law $q^{-1/\nu}$ typical of self-avoiding walk statistics. The matching between excluded volume and ideal chains at small q, and the excluded volume power law behavior at large q are observed for ${\bf q}$ orthogonal to the main elongation axis but not yet for ${\bf q}$ along the elongation direction itself, as a result of interferences with finite extensibility effects. Our simulations support the existence of anisotropic shear blobs for polymers in good solvent under shear flow for $\beta>1$ provided chains are sufficiently long.Comment: 36 pages, 11 figures, submitted to J. Chem. Phy

Thermal Theories of Continua: Survey and Developments

The international Conference "Thermocon'16" (Thermal Theories of Continua: Survey and Developments 2016) shall bring together scientists working in different disciplines of thermal theories of continua and discrete systems, such as Classical Irreversible Thermodynamics, Non- Equilibrium Thermodynamics, Rational Thermodynamics, Extended Thermodynamics, Mesoscopic Theories of Continua, GENERIC, Endoreversible Thermodynamics, Second Law Analysis, Finite Time Thermodynamics, Variational methods in Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics, Applications of Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics to complex materials, used in different fields of technology, such as nanosystems, superfluids, electromagnetic systems with internal variables, crystals with defects of dislocations, porous materials and so on, and to biophysics