Single Chain Slip-Spring Model for Fast Rheology Simulations of Entangled Polymers on GPU

TL;DR

This paper introduces a GPU-optimized single chain slip-spring model for rapid rheology simulations of entangled polymers, maintaining key statistical properties and reproducing rheological behaviors efficiently.

Contribution

A modified slip-spring model compatible with GPU computation that preserves detailed balance and accurately captures static and linear rheological responses.

Findings

Model reproduces linear viscoelasticity qualitatively

GPU implementation significantly accelerates simulations

Theoretical analysis of statistical properties supports model validity

Abstract

We propose a single chain slip-spring model, which is based on the slip-spring model by Likhtman [A. E. Likhtman, Macromolecules, 38, 6128 (2005)], for fast rheology simulations of entangled polymers on a GPU. We modify the original slip-spring model slightly for efficient calculations on a GPU. Our model is designed to satisfy the detailed balance condition, which enables us to analyze its static or linear response properties easily. We theoretically analyze several statistical properties of the model, such as the linear response, which will be useful to analyze simulation data. We show that our model can reproduce several rheological properties such as the linear viscoelasticity or the viscosity growth qualitatively. We also show that the use of a GPU can improve the performance drastically.