Rheology of wormlike micellar fluids from Brownian and molecular dynamicssimulations

Abstract

There is a great need for understanding the link between the detailed chemistry ofsurfactants, forming wormlike micelles, and their macroscopic rheological properties. In thispaper we show how this link may be explored through particle simulations. Firstwe review an existing bead–spring model. We find that shear flow enhances theformation of rings at the expense of linear chains. The shear viscosity of this model isdominated by solvent contributions, however, and the link with the chemistry of thesurfactants is missing. We introduce a more realistic Brownian dynamics model, theparameters of which are measured from atomistic molecular dynamics simulations.