Constant interchain pressure effect in extensional flows of oligomer diluted polystyrene and poly(methyl methacrylate) melts

The constant ‘interchain pressure’ idea has been addressed, to evaluate if it is an adequate quantitative assumption to describe the fluid mechanics of oligomer diluted entangled NMMD polymer systems. The molecular stress function constitutive framework has been used with the constant interchain pressure assumption. Furthermore, the maximal extensibility based on the number of Kuhn steps in an entanglement has been used based on the relative Padé inverse Langevin function. The model predictions agree with the extensional measurements on all previously published poly(methyl methacrylate)s and almost all published oligomer diluted NMMD polystyrenes. The only deviation is on the most diluted and largest molecular weight case of an 18% 1880 kg/mol polystyrene in oligomer diluent. In this case, the maximal extensibility is not needed.