A research paper based on the collaboration with Australian professors has been published.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.6b00823
In this research, the elongational behavior of entangled polymers was investigated. The topic is something very typical for non-linear rheology of polymers. Indeed, there have been lots of attempts for this issue. The problem in this specific paper is the material behavior under two-step elongational flows. Namely, the polymeric liquid was stretched under a certain elongational rate until a pre-determined stretching time, and then, the stretch rate was increased with a stepwise manner. The purpose is to extract the polymer dynamics under the transition between different non-linear but steady states. The experimental part was made by the research group in Monash University, and I joined the project to simulate the behavior by my multi-chain slip-link model. Interestingly, the experimental results cannot be reproduced by any theoretical models including my simulations. I cannot specify the reason and actually this experimental dataset is very difficult in many aspects. Consequently, the discussion is not satisfactory, mainly due to the failure of the models that are expected to depict molecular pictures…
Professor Sridhar who kindly invited me to this project, has retired last year. I heard that his research group has been dissolved. For such an event, I have ambivalent feelings. For one side, of course, the retirement of great researcher and the loss of his active group are sad news for the society. On the other hand, the new vacancy is necessary for younger researchers who might explore completely new directions.
Nevertheless,I thank the Australian professors for letting me join this project.