Microstructures of Polymer Solutions of Flow Past a Confined Cylinder

Abstract

Numerical simulation is used to investigate the flow of polymer solutions past a symmetrically/asymmetrically confined cylinder by using FENE-P model and PTT model. A collocated finite volume method on unstructured triangular meshes is presented and its validity is proved by comparing the predicted velocity and stress point-wise with experimental data and numerical results in corresponding references. Microstructures of polymer solutions, including molecular orientation, extension, deformation, entanglement, are investigated through analyzing the information of conformation tensor in FENE-P model. Present results are hoping to give more insight into microscopic of complex flows and be more helpful to the industrial application.