A visco-hyperelastic formulation for the rheology of immiscible blends.

It has recently been shown that the dynamics of complex interfaces can be treated by hyperelastic finite deformation, and the Cauchy stress tensor can be written as a tensor derivative of the interfacial energy. In the present study, the analytical nature of this tensor derivative was further explored, resulting in a more useful constitutive relation between the stress tensor and the Finger strain tensor. To accommodate the interfacial relaxation effects, an energy balance principle was adopted in developing a nonlinear relaxation model which was then used in a visco-hyperelastic formulation for stress determination. Case studies on this visco-hyperelastic model were performed, and validations against known results were attempted. While at small deformation rates, the new model agrees with the linear viscoelastic calculations, as well as Doi and Ohta's scaling predictions, high nonlinearity was observed at large deformation rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]