TITLE:
Modeling Directionality of Liquid Crystalline Polymers on Arbitrary Meshes
AUTHORS:
Arash Ahmadzadegan, Michael A. Zimmerman, Anil Saigal
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
JOURNAL NAME:
Modeling and Numerical Simulation of Material Science,
Vol.3 No.1,
January
21,
2013
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.