Puggioni L, Musacchio S
Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, <a href="https://ror.org/048tbm396">Università degli Studi di Torino</a>, via P. Giuria 1, 10125 Turin, Italy.
Instituut-Lorentz, <a href="https://ror.org/027bh9e22">Universiteit Leiden</a>, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Phys Rev E. 2024 Jul;110(1-2):015104. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.110.015104.
The relationship between the polymer orientation and the chaotic flow, in a dilute solution of rigid rodlike polymers at low Reynolds number, is investigated by means of direct numerical simulations. It is found that the rods tend to align with the velocity field in order to minimize the friction with the solvent fluid, while regions of rotational disorder are related to strong vorticity gradients, and therefore to the chaotic flow. The "turbulent-like" behavior of the system is therefore associated with the emergence and interaction of topological defects of the mean director field, similarly to active nematic turbulence. The analysis has been carried out in both two and three spatial dimensions.
