Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2003

Abstract

We describe an unexpected constitutive transition in entangled polymer solutions. At and beyond a critical stress, the initial spatially homogeneous and well-entangled sample transforms from its entangled (coiled) state into a fully disentangled (stretched) state over a period during which the resulting shear rate increases in a spatially inhomogeneous fashion. In the mode of controlled shear rate, the sample exhibits a stress plateau over three decades. Flow birefringence and normal stress observations unravel additional features of these flow phenomena.

Publication Title

Physical Review Letters

Volume

91

Issue

19

Required Publisher's Statement

Copyright 2003 American Institute of Physics. The original published version of this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.198301.

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