Models for polymeric and anisotropic liquids. (Q2276630)

The book reviews the rheological models for polymeric liquids or more generally liquids exhibiting anisotropy. It is divided in two parts of comparable size. The first part, entitled ``Illustrations and Applications'' goes through a series of models with increasing complexity. Some of these models take the FENE (finitely extendable nonlinear elastic) chain as a fundamental element, starting from the finitely extendable dumbbell in Chap. 2, and passing to the multibeads chains (Chap. 3), investigating the nonlinear viscoelastic properties of dense polymer melts (Chap. 4) and ending with the analysis of various extensions of the FENE model in Chap. 5. In the last three chapters (6, 7, 8) of Part I different kinds of approaches are illustrated: kinetic model equations (the so-called tube model), the elongated particles models (including rod-likes polymers, uniaxial fluids, ferrofluids, liquid crystals), and models based on statistical mechanics (Langevin and Fokker-Planck equation, etc.). Part II (Theory and Computational Recipes) is more focussed on providing the basis for numerical simulations in various situations, with explicit examples. The list of references is impressively long (429 items) and follows the order of quotation. The author index reports also the quotation numbers, facilitating the search of the corresponding titles. The book is certainly not for beginners and its density and conciseness shows that it mainly addresses to people well introduced in the subject. On the other hand, it manages to illustrate many different aspects of this complex theory in little more than two hundred pages.