Flow-Induced Crystallization
Flow-induced crystallization (FIC) is a vital topic for melt processing of engineering thermoplastics that can crystallize. Application of a flow field can nucleate orders of magnitude more crystals, resulting in smaller crystallites. This morphology change is known to impact mechanical properties of semicrystalline polymers and hence, understanding and controlling flow-induced effects on crystallization is important. The FIC "precursors"Â, created by either shear or extensional flows applied to the polymer melt that ultimately nucleate crystals, have yet to be identified. One promising area for identifying the FIC precursors in order to develop better models for FIC is computer simulation; this is the topic of a 2019 invited review article by Professor Richard Graham. In this virtual issue, we assemble more than 40 Journal of Rheology papers that study various aspects of this topical area.
