Yitzhak Shnidman

Interfacial slip in sheared polymer blends.

We have developed a dynamic self-consistent field theory, without any adjustable parameters, for unentangled polymer blends under shear. Our model accounts for the interaction between polymers, and enables one to compute the evolution of the local rheology, microstructure, and the conformations of the polymer chains under shear self-consistently. We use this model to study the interfacial dynamics in sheared polymer blends and make a quantitative comparison between this model and molecular dynamics simulations. We find good agreement between the two methods.