Linear stability of viscoplastic flows down an incline

Abstract

The stability analysis of viscoplastic flows down an inclined plane is done by comparing results obtained through theoretical and numerical studies of “regularized” models. The theoretical analysis is performed for Regularized Bingham and Casson-like fluids via the long-wave approximation method. In particular, the Bingham and the Casson flow have different stability characteristics, for Bingham-type materials an increase in yield stress leads to flow destabilization, while Casson-type materials show the opposite behaviour. The numerical study is performed by using the Papanastasiou and the “exact” Bingham model via a spectral method. The comparison between theoretical and numerical results shows excellent agreement. Our findings highlight that “regularized” and “exact” flow and can have stability characteristics, although they are “practically indistinguishable”. We validate our approach with the Regularized Bingham-like model, which is in rather satisfactory agreement with the experimental data.