creator Andreev, Marat advisor Schieber, Jay D. It is widely accepted that dynamics of entangled polymers can be described by the tube model. Here we advocate for an alternative approach to entanglement modeling known as slip-links. Recently, slip-links were shown to possess important advantages over tube models, namely they have strong connections to atomistic, multichain levels of description, agree with non-equilibrium thermodynamics, are applicable to any chain architecture and can be used in linear or non-linear rheology. We present a hierarchy of slip-link models that are connected to each other through successive coarse graining. Models in the hierarchy are consistent in their overlapping domains of applicability in order to allow a straightforward mapping of parameters. In particular, the most–detailed level of description has four parameters, three of which can be determined directly from atomistic simulations. On the other hand, the least–detailed member of the hierarchy is numerically accessible, and allows for non-equilibrium flow predictions of complex chain architectures. Using GPU implementation these predictions can be obtained in minutes of computational time on a single desktop equipped with a mainstream gaming GPU. The GPU code is available online for free download. Submitted by Erma Thomas (thomase@iit.edu) on 2015-07-23T19:36:34Z No. of bitstreams: 2 main_thesis.pdf: 18900167 bytes, checksum: 4e7186393e4c89db0111251e31cc10c2 (MD5) signed_title_page.pdf: 568051 bytes, checksum: 70354ddc663bc32d6e3e3da855bbf7de (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-23T19:36:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 main_thesis.pdf: 18900167 bytes, checksum: 4e7186393e4c89db0111251e31cc10c2 (MD5) signed_title_page.pdf: 568051 bytes, checksum: 70354ddc663bc32d6e3e3da855bbf7de (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12 Ph.D. in Physics, December 2014 2014 2014-12 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3481 en Dissertation born digital application/pdf In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access PHYS / Physics Illinois Institute of Technology Affiliated department