Computer simulation of the melting kinetics of polymer crystals under condition of modulated temperature

Computer simulation has been applied to the modeling of the melting kinetics of polymer crystals, which we have recently presented to predict the response of the kinetics to a sinusoidal modulation in temperature on heating. The frequency and heating-rate dependencies have been examined with a Gaussian or uniform distribution of the melting points. For both of the distributions, the details of the dependence have been examined on the basis of the analytical results of the modeling. It has also been confirmed that the response of the kinetics has higher harmonics as expected from the formulation of the modeling. This behavior corresponds to the experimental results of temperature-modulated DSC (T-MDSC) in the melting region of polymer crystals. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.