Plateau moduli of Kremer-Grest models for commodity polymer melts

TL;DR

This study estimates the plateau moduli of highly entangled polymer melts using two deformation protocols, showing strong agreement with each other and with experimental data, advancing understanding of polymer melt mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to accurately estimate plateau moduli from time-dependent elastic response and compares two deformation protocols for consistency.

Findings

Excellent agreement between the two deformation protocols.

Good correspondence with experimental data.

Method effectively extrapolates to infinite time and zero strain.

Abstract

We estimate the plateau moduli of highly entangled end-pinned bead-spring polymer melts with Z = 100 and Z = 200 from the time-dependent elastic response to a step strain, which we first extrapolate to infinite time and then interpolate to zero strain. We present data for systems deformed in the melt state as well as for systems deformed at the primitive path level following the recent iPPA protocol. We observe excellent agreement between the plateau moduli obtained via the two deformation protocols and good agreement with the available experimental data for commodity polymer melts using a common mapping on the Kuhn scale.