Tumbling of polymers in semidilute solution under shear flow

Abstract

The tumbling dynamics of individual polymers in semidilute solution is studied by large-scale non-equilibrium mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations. We find that the tumbling time is equal to the non-equilibrium relaxation time of the polymer end-to-end distance along the flow direction and strongly depends on concentration. In addition, the normalized tumbling frequency as well as the widths of the alignment distribution functions for a given concentration-dependent Weissenberg number exhibit a weak concentration dependence in the cross-over regime from a dilute to a semidilute solution. For semidilute solutions a universal behavior is obtained. This is a consequence of screening of hydrodynamic interactions at polymer concentrations exceeding the overlap concentration.