Modeling Directionality of Liquid Crystalline Polymers on Arbitrary Meshes

Arash Ahmadzadegan, Michael A. Zimmerman, Anil Saigal

Mechanical Engineering Department, Tufts University, Medford, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/mnsms.2013.31001                

Abstract

The orientation of crystals in liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) during the processing method affects the properties of these materials. In this paper, the main components of modeling the directionality of LCPs, namely Franks elastic energy equation, evolution equation and translation of directors are studied. The complexity of flow channels in polymer processing requires a more robust method for modeling directionality that can be applied to varieties of meshes. A method for practically simulating the directionality of crystallines on a macroscopic scale is developed. This method can be applied to any combination and type of meshes. The results show successful modeling of the directionality for each component of the model. Here, a 2D case with structured and unstructured mesh is considered and the rheology is simulated using ANSYS? FLUENT?. C++ codes written for user defined functions (UDFs) are used to implement the directionality simulation.

Keywords

Franks Elastic Energy; Evolution Equations; Liquid Crystalline Polymers; Directionality; Orientation Modeling Franks Elastic Energy; Evolution Equations; Liquid Crystalline Polymers; Directionality; Orientation Modeling Franks Elastic Energy; Evolution Equations; Liquid Crystalline Polymers; Directionality; Orientation Modeling

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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