Viscoelastic stresses in the stagnation flow of a dilute polymer solution

Abstract

In this paper, we consider viscoelastic stresses T 11, T 12 and T 22 arising in the stagnation flow of a dilute polymer solution; in particular, we consider an upper convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid. We present exact solutions to the coupled partial differential equations describing the viscoelastic stresses and deduce the results for the stress T 22 of Becherer et al. [P. Becherer, A.N. Morozov, W. van Saarloos, Scaling of singular structures in extensional flow of dilute polymer solutions, J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 153 (2008) 183–190]. As we considered the viscoelastic stresses over two spatial variables, we are able to study the effect of variable boundary data at the inflow. As such, our results are applicable to a wider range of fluid flow problems.