Mechanical structures in polymer melts. II. Roles of entanglements in viscosity and elastic turbulence

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Abstract
Current theories of polymer flow processes often sacrifice realistic molecular models for simplicity of their mathematical equations. An analysis of what might happen to molecules of more realistic sizes and shapes under shear flow, shows the importance of the rapid Brownian motion of chain segments, the elastic deformations of polymer random coils, and the dissipation of this elastic random coil energy by the relatively slow slippage of the chains past each other at a few entanglements where steric hindrance causes long relaxation times. This makes the energy loss depend on the time at each local deformation, and not on the overall shear rate. At high shear rates this model leads to “cluster flow” and low loss cyclic deformations, rather than the high loss processes of steady‐state shear. This model gives reasonable qualitative explanations for many anomalous flow properties, and it has predicted new effects that have since been observed.

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