Revisiting boundary layer flows of viscoelastic fluids

Paul Griffiths, Liam Escott*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In this article we reconsider high Reynolds number boundary layer flows of fluids with viscoelastic properties. We show that a number of previous studies that have attempted to address this problem are, in fact, incomplete. We correctly reformulate the problem and solve the governing equations using a Chebyshev collocation scheme. By analysing the decay of the solutions to the far-field we determine the correct stress boundary conditions required to solve problems of this form.

Our results show that both the fluid velocity within the boundary layer and the stress at the solid boundary increase due to the effect of viscoelasticity. As a consequence of this, we predict a thinning of the boundary layer as the value of the dimensionless viscoelastic flow parameter is increased. These results contradict a number of prominent studies in the literature but are supported by results owing from an asymptotic analysis based on the assumption of the smallness of the non-dimensional viscoelastic flow parameter.
Original languageEnglish
Article number104976
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics
Volume312
Early online date22 Dec 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Funding Information:
The authors wish to acknowledge support from the UKRI EPSRC, UK (Grant No. EP/V006614/2). We also wish to acknowledge the insightful comments of the anonymous reviewers.

Keywords

  • Boundary-layer
  • Viscoelastic
  • Self-similar

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