Monte Carlo Simulation for the Morphology and Kinetics of Spherulites and Shish-Kebabs in Isothermal Polymer Crystallization

Abstract

Monte Carlo method is used to capture the evolution of spherulites and shish-kebabs and to predict the crystallization kinetics in isothermal polymer crystallization. Effects of nucleation density and growth rate of spherulites, nucleation density, and length growth rate of shish-kebabs, respectively, on crystallization are investigated. Results show that nucleation densities of both spherulites and shish-kebabs strongly affect crystallization rate as well as morphology. An increase in nucleation density of either spherulites or shish-kebabs leads to a quicker crystallization rate and a smaller average spherulite size. It is also shown that nucleation density of shish-kebabs has a stronger impact on crystallization rate. Growth rate of spherulites and length growth rate of shish-kebabs also have significant effect on crystallization rate and morphology. An increase in growth rate of spherulites or length growth rate of shish-kebabs also speeds up the crystallization rate; additionally, a decrease in growth rate of spherulites or an increase in length growth rate of shish-kebabs results in a more highly anisotropic shish-kebab structure and a smaller average size of spherulites. Results also show that the effect of growth rate of spherulites is more important than the effect of length growth rate of shish-kebabs on crystallization.

Kinetics and Morphology of Flow Induced Polymer Crystallization in 3D Shear Flow Investigated by Monte Carlo Simulation

“…However, we shall mention that these works were mainly concentrated on spherulite structure. Our work [24] was an exception. In our previous work [24], we applied a Monte Carlo method to capture the evolution of both spherulites and shish-kebabs and calculate the crystallization kinetics in polymer crystallization.…”

“…Our work [24] was an exception. In our previous work [24], we applied a Monte Carlo method to capture the evolution of both spherulites and shish-kebabs and calculate the crystallization kinetics in polymer crystallization. The work was carried out with parametric study where the effects of nucleation density and growth rate of spherulites, nucleation density and length growth rate of shish-kebabs on the crystallization were examined.…”

“…Figure 1 shows the Monte Carlo method we used in the simulation. To better implement this method, we refer to our work [24] for more details. Here, we briefly present the important techniques and parameters.…”

“…Thus far, there have been many studies on the morphological simulation of polymer crystallization. Examples include: Raabe [12][13][14], Lin et al [15], and Spina et al [16,17] presented a cellular automaton method to simulate the kinetics and topology of spherulite growth for polymer crystallization; Liu et al [18,19] used a level set method to capture the growth and impingement of spherulites during the polymer cooling stage; Micheletti and Burge [20] and Ruan et al [21,22] applied a pixel coloring method to model and simulate the crystallization of polymer and short fiber reinforced polymer; and Ketdee and Anantawaraskul [23] and Ruan et al [24] presented the Monte Carlo simulation in study of crystallization kinetics and morphology development in polymer crystallization. However, we shall mention that these works were mainly concentrated on spherulite structure.…”

A Note for Probabilistic Model of Polymer Crystallization in Temperature Gradients

“…The method of mesh generation and implementation of Monte Carlo method are not described here. We refer our previous work [8,19,20] for more details. The validity of our Monte Carlo method is proven in our previous work by the comparison of the experimental result taken by Pawlak and Piorkowska and the numerical work taken by Ouyang et al [3,7,8].…”