Convergence of
Experiment and Theory for Dilute Polymer Solutions with Successive Fine
Graining
The importance of incorporating fluctuating finite extensibility, hydrodynamic interactions and excluded volume effects into molecular theories for dilute polymer solutions, in order to adequately describe their complex behaviour, has become increasingly apparent over the past few years, and a number of different approaches for achieving this objective, all based on using exact Brownian dynamics simulations in the context of bead-spring chain models, have been proposed recently. In addition to making an essentially arbitrary choice of the number of beads in the chain (or the degree of coarse-graining), these approaches also adopt various schemes for determining the values of the parameters associated with the description of these mesoscale phenomena. The method of successive fine graining offers a means of overcoming some of the ambiguities associated with these approaches. In this talk, the validity of this method is demonstrated by comparing predictions with exact bead-rod simulations, and with experimental observations of static and dynamic equilibrium properties, and nonlinear rheological properties.