Abstract
The flow of a bi-disperse polymer melt through a hyperbolic contraction is simulated using the recently proposed Rolie-Double-Poly constitutive model (Boudara et al., 2019). This simplified tube model takes account of the nonlinear coupling between the dynamics of the long and short-chains in a bi-disperse blend, in particular it reproduces the enhancement of the stretch relaxation time that arises from the coupling between constraint release and chain retraction. Flow calculations are performed by implementing both the Rolie-Double-Poly and multimode Rolie-Poly models in OpenFOAM using the RheolTool library. While both models predict very similar flow patterns, the enhanced stretch relaxation of the Rolie-Double-Pol models results in an increase in the molecular stretch of the long chain component in the pure extensional flow along the centre-line of the contraction, but a decrease in the stretch in shear-flow near the channel walls.
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Acknowledgments
AA would like to acknowledge funding from the Ministry of Education Malaysia and the Universiti Sains Malaysia. OGH also acknowledges funding from EPSRC Grant Ref. EP/P005403/1.
We would like to thank Victor Boudara and Daniel Read for helpful insights and discussions on the Rolie-Double-Poly model.
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This paper is based on an invited lecture presented by the corresponding author at the 30th Anniversary Symposium of the Korean Society of Rheology (The 18th International Symposium on Applied Rheology (ISAR)), held on May 21-24, 2019, Seoul.
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Azahar, A.A., Harlen, O.G. & Walkley, M.A. Modelling contraction flows of bi-disperse polymer blends using the Rolie-Poly and Rolie-Double-Poly equations. Korea-Aust. Rheol. J. 31, 203–209 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13367-019-0021-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13367-019-0021-6