Computational modelling of compressible nonisothermal viscoelastic fluids

Abstract

The prediction of compressible nonisothermal flows of viscoelastic fluids is important in many industrial processes. Until relatively recently, there was a lack of tractable thermodynamically consistent mathematical models for this class of flows. In this paper a stabilised finite element scheme is presented for the models developed by the authors Mackay and Phillips (2019) which incorporates compressibility and nonisothermal effects. Numerical results are presented for variants of a couple of benchmark problems: the lid driven cavity and the natural convection problems. The temporal discretisation is based on the Taylor–Galerkin method. A compressible version of the discrete elastic viscous split stress (DEVSS) formulation is used to stabilise the numerical scheme. The combined and separate influence of compressible, viscoelastic and thermal effects on the characteristics of these benchmark flows is studied for the first time.