Polymer stretching in laminar and random flows: entropic characterization
Abstract
Polymers in non-uniform flows undergo strong deformation, which in the presence of persistent stretching can result in the coil-stretch transition. The statistics of polymer deformation depends strongly on the nature and the properties of the flow. Sultanov et al. [Phys. Rev. E 103, 033107 (2021)] have characterized the coil-stretch transition in an elastic turbulence of von Kármán flow by measuring the entropy of polymer extension as a function of the Weissenberg number. The entropic characterization of the coil-stretch transition is here extended to a set of laminar and random velocity fields that are benchmarks for the study of polymer stretching in flow. In the case of random velocity fields, a suitable description of the transition is obtained by considering the entropy of the logarithm of the extension instead of the entropy of the extension itself. Entropy emerges as an effective tool for capturing the coil-stretch transition and comparing its features in different flows.
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)