Inflow boundary conditions for steady flow of viscoelastic fluids with differential constituitive laws

Abstract

Abstract : Steady flows of viscoelastic fluids can not be uniquely determined by imposing boundary conditions only for the velocities as in the Newtonian case. The reason for this is that the fluids have memory, and therefore the flow inside the domain is affected by what happened before the fluid entered the domain. This leads to the need for extra boundary conditions at an inflow boundary. The nature of these inflow boundary conditions has not been analyzed previously, and it is certainly dependent on the constitutive law. In this paper, we look at the special case of differential constitutive relations with a single relaxation mode. We consider steady transverse flows across a strip which are small perturbations of a flow with constant velocity. It turns out that in this case two extra inflow boundary conditions are required in two dimensions, and four in three dimensions. This is what would be expected from an analysis of characteristics, but it contradicts the belief of many rheologists that it is possible to prescribe the extra stress at an inflow boundary. The problem studied here is of potential relevance for numerical simulations of steady flows. Many of the flows currently simulated are on infinite domains. Numerically, these domains are truncated, and on the inflow boundary of the truncated domain people usually prescribe the extra stress. According to the analysis in this paper, this is an overdetermined problem, and therefore errors must be expected from this procedure unless the artificial boundaries are chosen far enough out. Keywords: Upper Convected Maxwell Model.