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Updated: Sep 19, 2025

Fabrication of Large-area Free-standing Ultrathin Polymer Films
Published on: June 3, 2015
Activity-enhanced shear thinning of flexible linear polar polymers
Arindam Panda1, Roland G Winkler2, Sunil P Singh1
1Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Department of Physics, Bhopal 462 066, Madhya Pradesh, India.
None:
The rheological properties of tangentially propelled flexible polymers under linear shear flow are studied by computer simulations and are compared with analytical calculations. We find a significant impact of the coupled nonequilibrium active and shear forces on the polymer characteristics. The polar activity enhances shear-induced stretching along the flow direction, shrinkage in the transverse direction, and implies a strongly amplified shear-thinning behavior. The characteristic shear rate for the onset of these effects is determined by the activity. In the asymptotic limit of large activities, the shear-induced features become independent of activity and, for asymptotically large shear rates, shear dominates over activity with passive polymer behavior.
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