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Abstract
The effect of steady longitudinal flow on nematic polymer systems is investigated using a simple mean-field approximation. Employing a connection between the shear rate and polymer chain extension we find that as the shear rate is increased in the nematic phase, the consequent chain extension significantly modifies the orientational order of the nematic monomers. In particular if a continuous (discontinuous) coil-stretch transition occurs above a critical shear rate in an ordered comb-like nematic polymer system, the birefringence changes sign continuously (discontinuously). We also examine the effect of pretransitional nematic ordering on the entropic elastic constant for chain extension in small shear flow.
