The quasi-equilibrium or maximum entropy approximation is applied in order to derive constitutive equations from kinetic models of polymer dynamics. It is shown in general and illustrated for an example how canonical distribution functions are obtained from the maximum entropy principle, how...

The method of invariant manifold is developed for a derivation of reduced description in kinetic equations of dilute polymeric solutions. It is demonstrated that this reduced description becomes universal in the limit of small Deborah and Weissenberg numbers, and it is represented by the...

We show how to coarse-grain polymers in a good solvent as single particles, interacting with density-independent or density-dependent interactions. These interactions can be between the centres of mass, the mid- or end-points of the polymers. We also show how to extend these methods to polymers...

The proton binding characteristics of ionizable interfaces and linear polyelectrolytes are different. While ionizable interfaces protonate in a single broad protonation step, linear polyelectrolytes often show distinct two-step protonation behavior. We explain this phenomenon on the basis of a...

Previous thermodynamic analyses of shear-induced shift of the spinodal line in diluted polymer solutions in plane Couette flows are extended here to the entangled regime by using the reptation model. The most significant difference with respect to the dilute regime is a shift of the critical...

Measurement of the resistance to a stretching motion, the so-called elongational viscosity ηe, has proven to be difficult for dilute polymer solutions, although it is important for a large number of applications. We attempt to deduce ηe of dilute solutions of flexible polymers in two different...

Three different thermodynamic approaches to nonlocal effects in a constitutive equation for the viscous pressure tensor are compared in order to illustrate the relative merits of different choices of independent variables. The first one considers a coupling between viscous pressure and diffusion...

Suspensions of solid particles in polymeric solutions are regarded as suspensions of solid particles and polymer molecules in a Newtonian fluid. Disturbances caused by the particles propagate in the Newtonian fluid and influence the distribution of the particles and conformation of the...

It is shown that the identification of the Lagrange multiplier conjugated to the viscous pressure tensor that was proposed in a previous paper [Physica A 233 (1996) 163–174] on information theory applied to fluids under flow yields for the orientational distribution function of dilute dumbbell...