Dynamics of dissolved polymer chains in isotropic turbulence

Polymers are remarkable molecules that have relaxation times that can span 15 orders of magnitude. The very longest of the relaxation times for high molecular weight polymers are sufficiently long to overlap with fluid mechanical times scales; under those circumstances, polymers can influence the flow. A well-known example that is still not fully understood is polymer drag reduction. It has been known since Toms (1949 Proc. 1st Int. Congress on Rheology 2 135 -41) that parts per million (mass basis) concentrations of polymers can reduce the drag on a solid surface by as much as 80%. Understanding the mechanism of drag reduction requires an understanding of the dynamics of the dissolved polymer chain in response to local fluctuations in the turbulent flow field. We investigate this by using Brownian dynamics simulations of bead-spring models of polymers immersed in a turbulent solvent that is separately computed using direct numerical simulations. We observe that polymer chains with parameters that are effective for drag reduction generally remain stretched for long periods of time and only occasionally relax. The relatively restricted configuration space they sample makes it reasonable to represent their behavior with simpler dumbbell models. We also study the spatial structure of the polymer stresses using a Lagrangian strategy. The results explain the need for relatively high spatial resolution for numerical simulations of polymer flows.