A general approach to determining the evolution of molecular weight distribution curves of linear polymers undergoing chain scission

A numerical method is developed to compute the development of molecular weight distribution (MWD) curves of linear polymers undergoing chain scission. The method can be applied to complex chain scission kinetics and for arbitrarily complex initial MWD curves. Our method is based on the method of lines (MoL). Different from the existing numerical scheme, we propose the use of logarithmically spaced points. This development ensures the accuracy of the computed MWD curves at low molecular weights, and it does not require a very fine discretization to produce an accurate result.