Experimental evaluation of the pseudotime principle for nonisothermal polymer flows

We have applied a series of start-up of uniaxial extensions to very high strain followed by stress relaxation. A potential temperature change was applied during the stress relaxation. We used two thermorheological simple polymers; a linear polystyrene and a branched low density polyethylene. Experiments performed with temperature changes during the stress relaxation were shown to be identical with isothermal ones in the “pseudotime”, within the accuracy of the experiments. This verifies that the pseudotime approach seems to be the general basis for nonisothermal microstructural modeling for flow of polymers. The pseudotime is given as ξ(t) = ∫to 1/aT(T(t1))dT1, where aT are the well established time-temperature superposition shift factors, calculated from the past temperatures (at time t0) in a particle path.