The mirror relations and nonlinear viscoelasticity of polymer melts

An attempt is made to incorporate into a quasilinear viscoelastic constitutive equation of the Boltzmann superposition type the two mirror relations of Gleissle, as well as his relation between the steady-state first normal-stress difference and the shear viscosity curve. It is shown that the three relations can hold separately within this constitutive model, but not simultaneously, because they require a different nonlinear strain measure, namelyS₁₂ () = – a ( – 1) (a = 0 for 1,a = 1 for 1) for the mirroring of the viscosities,S₁₂ () = – a (–k²/) (a = 0 for k, a = 1 for k) for the mirroring of the first normal-stress coefficients, and for the third relation. Here denotes the shear strain and erf the error function. Experimental data on melts of a low-density polyethylene, a high-density polyethylene and a polypropylene show that the mirror relations are passable approximations, but that the third relation meets reality surprisingly close if the right value ofk is used.