Hydrodynamic interaction effects in the rheological properties of Hookean dumbbells in steady shear flow: a Brownian dynamics simulation study

Abstract

In this paper we present a Brownian dynamics simulation study where we employ the algorithm of Ermak and McCammon including solvent flow in the calculation of the rheological properties of Hookean dumbbells in steady shear flow. We have also included the possibility of the excluded volume and we have studied several possibilities with and without hydrodynamic interactions (HI). When hydrodynamic interaction is rigorously treated, the intrinsic viscosity is found to increase. If the Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa HI tensor is used instead of the Oseen tensor, the changes in the material functions are quite small. On the other hand, excluded-volume interactions produce, as expected, an increase in the viscosity. This is so both with and without HI. Our results are compared with those of other works in which the HI tensor is pre-averaged or consistently averaged.