On the calculation of transport properties of polymer melts from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics

This note presents an analysis of the viscosity of linear and branched polymer melts at low shear rates and compares the results of several different nonequilibrium molecular dynamics methods. The new, more precise results presented here indicate that earlier calculations of the zero shear viscosity of linear polymers are consistent with Green–Kubo estimates. For branched chains, however, these results suggest that earlier extrapolation of viscosities to zero shear rate overpredicted the effect of branching.