Reptation model under shear

The double reptation model was used to evaluate viscoelastic behavior of metallocene-catalyzed polyethylene and low-density polyethylene blends by Peon et al. (2003). They compared their results with those obtained for HDPE/BPE blends prepared under similar conditions. Since this model assumes miscibility between the mixed species, the experimental viscosity of HDPE/BPE blends showed only small deviation compared to that expected according to the reputation miscible model. However, the model underestimated the compositional dependence of the zero-shear viscosity for mPE/LDPE blends, especially at intermediate levels. The enhanced zero-shear viscosity in immiscible blends such as PETG/EVA, PP/EVA, or EVA/PE blends was found to be more abrupt than it is for mPE/LDPE blends (Lacroix et al. 1996, 1997 Peon et al. 2003). 

In this section, we present the molecular theory for the linear dynamic viscoelasticity of miscible polymer blends by Han and Kim (1989a, 1989b), which is based on the concept of the tube model presented in Chapter 4. Specifically, the reptation of two primitive chains of dissimilar chemical structures under an external potential will be considered, and the expressions for the linear viscoelastic properties of miscible polymer blends will be presented. We will first present the expressions for zero-shear viscosity ob. dynamic storage and loss moduli G co) and G " co), and steady-state compliance J° for binary miscible blends of monodisperse, entangled flexible homopolymers and then consider the effect of polydispersity. There are a few other molecular theories reported... 

---