International Polymer Processing, Vol.19, No.3, 267-274, 2004
Numerical and physical modeling of polymer crystallization - Part I: Theoretical and numerical analysis
In this first paper we have revisited Avrami's model and cast its basic equations into a differential system. This system is integrated numerically, which avoids unnecessary simplifying assumptions generally used in order to get analytical expressions. This allows us to introduce the variations of nucleation and growth parameters as a function of processing ones (temperature, cooling rate, shear rate, etc.). Our analysis shows that it is necessary to take into account the variation of the initial number of potential nuclei with temperature, which was usually ignored. Finally, an outpout of our calculations is the size distribution of the morphological entities, i.e., a quantitative information on microstructure.