No Arabic abstract
Using molecular dynamics simulation of a standard coarse-grained polymer glass model we investigate by means of the stress-fluctuation formalism the shear modulus $mu$ as a function of temperature $T$ and sampling time $Delta t$. While the ensemble-averaged modulus $mu(T)$ is found to decrease continuously for all $Delta t$ sampled, its standard deviation $delta mu(T)$ is non-monotonous with a striking peak at the glass transition. Confirming the effective time-translational invariance of our systems, $mu(Delta t)$ can be understood using a weighted integral over the shear-stress relaxation modulus $G(t)$. While the crossover of $mu(T)$ gets sharper with increasing $Delta t$, the peak of $delta mu(T)$ becomes more singular. % It is thus elusive to predict the modulus of a single configuration at the glass transition.
We investigate by means of molecular dynamics simulation a coarse-grained polymer glass model focusing on (quasi-static and dynamical) shear-stress fluctuations as a function of temperature T and sampling time $Delta t$. The linear response is characterized using (ensemble-averaged) expectation values of the contributions (time-averaged for each shear plane) to the stress-fluctuation relation $mu_{sf}$ for the shear modulus and the shear-stress relaxation modulus $G(t)$. Using 100 independent configurations we pay attention to the respective standard deviations. While the ensemble-averaged modulus $mu_{sf}(T)$ decreases continuously with increasing T for all $Delta t$ sampled, its standard deviation $delta mu_{sf}(T)$ is non-monotonous with a striking peak at the glass transition. The question of whether the shear modulus is continuous or has a jump-singularity at the glass transition is thus ill-posed. Confirming the effective time-translational invariance of our systems, the $Delta t$-dependence of $mu_{sf}$ and related quantities can be understood using a weighted integral over $G(t)$. This implies that the shear viscosity $eta(T)$ may be readily obtained from the $1/Delta t$-decay of $mu_{sf}$ above the glass transition.
We experimentally investigate the rheology and stress fluctuations of granules densely suspended in silicone oil. We find that both thickening strength and stress fluctuations significantly weaken with oil viscosity $eta_0$. Comparison of our rheological results to the Wyart-Cates model for describing different dynamic jamming states suggests a transition from frictional contacts to lubrication interactions as $eta_0$ increases. To clarify the contribution from viscous interactions to the rheology, we systematically measure stress fluctuations in various flow states. Reduction of stress fluctuations with $eta_0$ indicates that a strong lubrication layer greatly inhibits force correlations among particles. Measuring stress fluctuations in the strong shear thickening regime, we observe a crossover from asymmetric Gamma to symmetric Gaussian distributions and associated with it a decrease of lateral (radial) correlation length $xi$ with increasing shear rate.
The shear stress relaxation modulus $G(t)$ may be determined from the shear stress $tau(t)$ after switching on a tiny step strain $gamma$ or by inverse Fourier transformation of the storage modulus $G^{prime}(omega)$ or the loss modulus $G^{primeprime}(omega)$ obtained in a standard oscillatory shear experiment at angular frequency $omega$. It is widely assumed that $G(t)$ is equivalent in general to the equilibrium stress autocorrelation function $C(t) = beta V langle delta tau(t) delta tau(0)rangle$ which may be readily computed in computer simulations ($beta$ being the inverse temperature and $V$ the volume). Focusing on isotropic solids formed by permanent spring networks we show theoretically by means of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and computationally by molecular dynamics simulation that in general $G(t) = G_{eq} + C(t)$ for $t > 0$ with $G_{eq}$ being the static equilibrium shear modulus. A similar relation holds for $G^{prime}(omega)$. $G(t)$ and $C(t)$ must thus become different for a solid body and it is impossible to obtain $G_{eq}$ directly from $C(t)$.
Focusing on isotropic elastic networks we propose a novel simple-average expression $G(t) = mu_A - h(t)$ for the computational determination of the shear-stress relaxation modulus $G(t)$ of a classical elastic solid or fluid and its equilibrium modulus $G_{eq} = lim_{t to infty} G(t)$. Here, $mu_A = G(0)$ characterizes the shear transformation of the system at $t=0$ and $h(t)$ the (rescaled) mean-square displacement of the instantaneous shear stress $hat{tau}(t)$ as a function of time $t$. While investigating sampling time effects we also discuss the related expressions in terms of shear-stress autocorrelation functions. We argue finally that our key relation may be readily adapted for more general linear response functions.
In addition to the terminal flow (the region I) and the shear thinning (the region II), we discover two new flow regions in capillary flow at the wall stress higher than the plateau modulus of the polymer. The region III violates the empirical Cox-Merz rule with a significantly weaker shear thinning than the region II, and the region IV exhibits unexpected shear thickening. Moreover, the crossover shear rates between the regions II and III and between the regions III and IV scale with the number of entanglement per chain, Z=M_w/M_e, as Z^(-2.0) and Z^(-1.2) respectively. We attribute the weakening in shear thinning and the emergence of shear thickening to the deformation-induced non-Gaussian stretching of polymers. These observations offer the first experimental quantification of the deformation behaviors of polymer melts at high-stress shear.