NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF POLYMER CRYSTALLIZATION

We consider a mathematical model for solidification of semicrystalline polymers, describing the evolution of temperature, crystalline volume fraction, number and average size of crystals. In turn, the model cou ples a suitable kinetics of nonisothermal crystallization, taking into account both formation and growth of nuclei, with the thermal energy balance equation. We also present a model of secondary crystallization . The numerical approximation is performed by semiexplicit finite diff erences in time and finite elements in space. The fully discrete schem e amounts to solve, at any time step, a symmetric positive definite li near system preceded by an elementwise explicit computation. The compu ted numerical crystal structures match qualitatively the experimental ones.