Abstract
The blend morphology model developed by Wong et al. (Rheologica Acta, 2019), based on Peters et al. (J Rheol 45(3):659–689, 2001), is used to investigate the development of the polydispersity of the disperse polymer blend morphology in complex flow. First, the model is extended with additional morphological states. The extended model is tested for simple shear flow, where it is found that the droplet size distribution does not simply scale with the shear rate, because this scaling does not hold for coalescing droplets. Subsequently, the model is applied to Poiseuille flow, showing formation of distinct layers, which occurs in realistic pressure-driven flows. Finally, the model is applied on an eccentric cylinder flow, where histograms are made of the average droplet size throughout the domain. It is observed that outer cylinder rotation results in narrow distributions where the small droplets are relatively large, whereas inner cylinder rotation results in broad distributions where the small droplets are significantly smaller than in the case of outer cylinder rotation. Eccentricity seems to only have a minor effect if the maximum shear rate is held constant. The flow profile and history in combination with the maximum shear rate strongly determine how the polydisperse droplet size distribution develops.
Highlights
A common method for creating polymer materials with targeted properties is to blend multiple homopolymers
The extended blend model was first applied to simple shear flow, where it was found that the polydispersity distribution does not scale with the shear rate, because this scaling does not hold for the small droplets that exist in the coalescence regime
The model was applied to Poiseuille flow, showing formation of a layered blend morphology
Summary
A common method for creating polymer materials with targeted properties is to blend multiple homopolymers. The majority of polymer blends are immiscible, because mixing long polymer chains is thermodynamically unfavorable, leading to a multiphase structure (Lipatov 2002; Tucker and Moldenaers 2002). Depending on the volume fractions of the blend constituents, there can be a disperse or co-continuous morphology. The morphology undergoes changes due to deformation, breakup and coalescence. Controlling coalescence is critical for the final droplet morphology (Vermant et al 2004; Zou et al 2014)
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