Understanding polymer entanglements is essential for explaining the viscoelastic properties of polymer melts and solutions, and for modeling their behavior in processing applications. The slip-spring (SLSP) model has emerged as a powerful coarse-grained framework that effectively captures the rheological characteristics of entangled polymer melts. In this study, we investigate the applicability of the SLSP model to polymer solutions.
We employ a molecular-level approach that explicitly incorporates hydrodynamic interactions to explore the rheology of entangled polymer solutions over a wide concentration range. The model captures key features of solution dynamics, including the established scaling laws relating relaxation time to polymer concentration, and accurately describes the non-linear response under shear. These results highlight the SLSP model’s potential as a unified framework for both melts and solutions.
