Effect of shear flow on the transverse thermal conductivity of polymer melts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Oda, Kotaro, Yasuda, Shugo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Oda, Kotaro
Yasuda, Shugo
author_facet Oda, Kotaro
Yasuda, Shugo
contents The effect of shear flows on the thermal conductivity of polymer melts is investigated using a reversed nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (RNEMD) method. We extended the original RNEMD method to simultaneously produce spatial gradients of temperature and flow velocity in a single direction. This method enables accurate measurement of the thermal conductivity in the direction transverse to shear flow. The Weissenberg number defined with the shear rate and the relaxation time of the polymer conformation can uniformly differentiate the occurrence of shear rate dependence of the thermal conductivity across different chain lengths. The stress-thermal rule (STR) (i.e., the linear relationship between anisotropic parts of the stress tensor and the thermal conductivity tensor) holds for entangled polymer melts even under shear flows but not for unentangled polymer melts. Furthermore, once entanglements form in polymer chains, the stress-thermal coefficient in the STR remains independent of the polymer chain length. These observations align with the theoretical foundation of the STR, which focuses on energy transmission along the network structure of entangled polymer chains [Brule, Rheol. Acta 28, 257 (1989)]. However, under driven shear flows, the stress-thermal coefficient is notably smaller than that measured in the literature for a quasi-quiescent state without external forces. Although the mechanism of the STR in shear flows has yet to be fully elucidated, our study confirmed the validity of the STR in shear flows. This allows us to use the STR as a constitutive equation for computational thermo-fluid dynamics of polymer melts, thus having broad engineering applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_07027
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Effect of shear flow on the transverse thermal conductivity of polymer melts
Oda, Kotaro
Yasuda, Shugo
Soft Condensed Matter
Computational Physics
The effect of shear flows on the thermal conductivity of polymer melts is investigated using a reversed nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (RNEMD) method. We extended the original RNEMD method to simultaneously produce spatial gradients of temperature and flow velocity in a single direction. This method enables accurate measurement of the thermal conductivity in the direction transverse to shear flow. The Weissenberg number defined with the shear rate and the relaxation time of the polymer conformation can uniformly differentiate the occurrence of shear rate dependence of the thermal conductivity across different chain lengths. The stress-thermal rule (STR) (i.e., the linear relationship between anisotropic parts of the stress tensor and the thermal conductivity tensor) holds for entangled polymer melts even under shear flows but not for unentangled polymer melts. Furthermore, once entanglements form in polymer chains, the stress-thermal coefficient in the STR remains independent of the polymer chain length. These observations align with the theoretical foundation of the STR, which focuses on energy transmission along the network structure of entangled polymer chains [Brule, Rheol. Acta 28, 257 (1989)]. However, under driven shear flows, the stress-thermal coefficient is notably smaller than that measured in the literature for a quasi-quiescent state without external forces. Although the mechanism of the STR in shear flows has yet to be fully elucidated, our study confirmed the validity of the STR in shear flows. This allows us to use the STR as a constitutive equation for computational thermo-fluid dynamics of polymer melts, thus having broad engineering applications.
title Effect of shear flow on the transverse thermal conductivity of polymer melts
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.07027