A Modified Phase-Field Model for Polymer Crystal Growth

Abstract

The irrationality of existing phase field model is analyzed and a modified phase-field model is proposed for polymer crystal growth, in which the parameters are obtained from real materials and very simple to use, and most importantly, no paradoxical parameters appeared in the model. Moreover, it can simulate different microstructure patterns owing to the use of a new different free energy function for the simulation of morphologies of polymer. The new free energy function considers both the cases of T<Tm and T≥Tm, which is more reasonable than that in published literatures that all ignored the T≥Tm case. In order to show the validity of the modified model, the finite difference method is used to solve the model and different crystallization morphologies during the solidification process of isotactic polystyrene are obtained under different conditions. Numerical results show that the growth rate of the initial secondary arms is obviously increased as the anisotropy strength increases. But the anisotropy strength seems to have no apparent effect on the global growth rate. The whole growth process of the dendrite depends mainly upon the latent heat and the latent heat has a direct effect on the tip radius and tip velocity of side branches.