Effects of viscosity ratio and composition on development of morphology in chaotic mixing of polymers

This study investigated the effects of viscosity ratio (p) and composition on morphology development in an immiscible polymer system mixed under chaotic flow conditions. It was seen that morphology of the dispersed phase developed through a widely accepted route involving transitions from lamellas to fibrils and to droplets. It was found in experiments with p greater than or equal to 1 that the dispersed phase converted into droplets very rapidly with narrow droplet size distribution when p similar to 1. For higher values of p, the speed of morphological transitions slowed down, the droplet size distribution became wider, and much larger droplets were formed. Similar effects were observed at higher concentration of the dispersed phase. No self-similar scaling behavior was observed in the droplet size distribution, which can be attributed to the lack of self-similarity in the breakup of lamellas into fibrils. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.