Modeling and Simulating the Crystallization of Polymers via a Many-Particle System

This paper deals with to the modelling and simulation of the crystallization of polymers in an heterogeneous temperature field. Under realistic parameter ranges, of industrial interest, we face a multiple scale phenomenon since the temperature evolution occurs at a faster time scale with respect to the birth-and-growth process of crystallization. We propose a spatially structured stochastic bith-and-growth model for the crystallization process whose kinetics parameters depend locally upon the temperature field, and nonlocally upon the spatial distribution of the crystalline phase. For a large number of crystals the system can be shown to converge to a classical continuum deterministic model. We report here the results of the numerical simulation of the many particle system, and of the corresponding continuum model.