Chain molecule deformation in a uniform flow - A computer experiment

We investigate the stretching of a polymer in a uniform flow using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Our MD simulations represent an ab-initio experiment with no explicit assumption for the dynamics of a single chain except for using the generic Lennard-Jones and the FENE potentials. In spite of the modest length of our simulated chains, the qualitative features of experiments on DNA are reproduced and the predictions of a wormlike chain theory are found to hold, with the polymer molecule being free draining at large extensions.