ABSTRACT
In continuum mechanical terms, the deformation of polymer melts under stress is described by the equations expressing conservation of mass, momentum, and energy. The material properties are expressed in terms of a viscoelastic constitutive equation. This modeling approach is very useful for describing and understanding many practical polymer melt ¦ow phenomena. It makes these equations a logical choice to model polymer melt fracture. In addition, a good polymer melt fracture model should simplify the complex physical phenomena into clear and manageable equations without losing the essential physics of the issue at hand.
