FINITELY EXTENSIBLE BEAD SPRING CHAIN MACROMOLECULES IN STEADY ELONGATIONAL FLOWS

Infinitely dilute polymer solutions undergoing elongational flows are studied by modeling the polymer molecules as bead-spring chains. Monte Carlo integration is used to calculate the properties of chains of fi nitely extensible nonlinear elastic springs in steady uniaxial elongat ional flow from the exact solution for the distribution of configurati ons. The properties calculated include the mean square end-to-end dist ance of the chains and the elongational viscosity and intrinsic birefr ingence of the solution. These properties are compared to the predicti ons of the model under the Peterlin approximation. Whereas the models with and without the approximation show qualitatively similar results, there are substantial quantitative differences.