Hydrodynamic effects on scale-free polymer networks in external fields.

Abstract

We numerically analyze the influence of hydrodynamic interactions (HI) on scale-free polymer networks under external forces. We envisage that these polymer networks move under external applied fields: mechanical or electrical type. We work in the framework of the bead-spring model and include the HI in a preaveraged Oseen manner. We focus on physical quantities which depend on the eigenvalue spectrum: averaged monomer displacement and the mechanical relaxation modulus with its two components: the storage and the loss modulus. We analyze how these quantities depend on the underlying topology, such as the number of monomers and γ, which is the parameter that measures the connectivity of a network. The influence of topology appears in the intermediate region of time or frequency. For intermediate time/frequency region we do not encounter regions of constant slope by considering the hydrodynamic interactions, differently from the Rouse model, which neglects these HI. As expected we observe a more linear-like topology for high values of γ and a more star-like shape for low γs.