Polydispersity-based homotopy/continuation for phase equilibria of polydisperse polymer systems

This paper proposes a homotopy/continuation algorithm for the solution of phase equilibrium problems for mixtures involving one or more polydisperse polymers. The algorithm constructs a continuous trajectory in polydispersity space, starting from the solution of a phase equilibrium problem involving monodisperse polymers. The trajectory is such that the weight-average molecular weight is constant throughout, but the number of phases may vary.