Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of flexible polymers confined in a square microchannel and exposed to a Poiseuille flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. The chain length and the flow strength are systematically varied. Two transport regimes are identified, corresponding to weak and strong confinement. For strong confinement, the transport properties are independent of the polymer length. For weak confinement or sufficiently strong flow and far from the channel center, the local stretching is similar to that of a polymer in simple shear flow, but in the central part the polymer exhibits a different behavior. The analysis of the long-time tumbling dynamics of short polymers yields a non-periodic motion with a sublinear dependence on the flow strength.
Source: Europhysics Letters (EPL)
Authors: L. Cannavacciuolo, R. G. Winkler, G. Gompper
Institution: Forschungszentrum Jülich
Language: English
Subfield: Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes
Field: Chemical Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
OpenAlex ID: W1966267527