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

الملخص EN

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.