A phase-field model for simulating various spherulite morphologies of semi-crystalline polymers

A modified phase-field model is proposed for simulating the isothermal crystallization of polymer melts.The model consists of a second-order phase-field equation and a heat conduction equation.It obtains its model parameters from the real material parameters and is easy to use with tolerable computational cost.Due to the use of a new free energy functional form,the model can reproduce various single crystal morphologies of polymer melts under quiescent conditions,including dendritic,lamellar branching,ring-banded,breakup of ring-banded,faceted hexagonal,and spherulitic structures.Simulation results of isotactic polystyrene crystals demonstrate that the present phase-field model has the ability to give qualitative predictions of polymer crystallization under isothermal and quiescent conditions.