Synchronized Molecular-Dynamics Simulation via Macroscopic Heat and Momentum Transfer: An Application to Polymer Lubrication

Abstract

The Synchronized Molecular-Dynamics simulation which was recently proposed by authors [Phys. Rev. X {\bf 4}, 041011 (2014)] is applied to the analysis of polymer lubrication between parallel plates. The rheological properties, conformational change of polymer chains, and temperature rise due to the viscous heating are investigated with changing the values of thermal conductivity of the polymeric liquid. It is found that at a small applied shear stress on the plate, the temperature of polymeric liquid only slightly increases in inverse proportion to the thermal conductivity and the apparent viscosity of polymeric liquid is not much affected by changing the thermal conductivity. However, at a large shear stress, the transitional behaviors of the polymeric liquid occur due to the interplay of the shear deformation and viscous heating by changing the thermal conductivity. This transition is characterized by the Nahme-Griffith number $Na$ which is defined as the ratio of the viscous heating to the thermal conduction at a characteristic temperature. When the Nahme-Griffith number exceeds the unity, the temperature of polymeric liquid increases rapidly and the apparent viscosity also exponentially decreases as the thermal conductivity decreases. The conformation of polymer chains is stretched and aligned by the shear flow for $Na<1$, but the coherent structure becomes disturbed by the thermal motion of molecules for $Na>1$.