Experimental and theoretical observations of elastic instabilities in eccentric cylinder flows: local versus global instability

A theoretical and experimental investigation of the stability of the viscoelastic flow of a Boger fluid between eccentric cylinders is presented. In our theoretical study, a local linear stability analysis for the flow of an Oldroyd-B fluid suggests that the flow is elastically unstable for all eccentricities. A global solution to the stability problem is obtained by a perturbation eigenvalue analysis, incorporating the azimuthal variation of the base state flow at the same order as the streamwise variation of the stability function. A comparison between the local and global stability predictions is made. Flow visualization experiments with a solution of high molecular weight polyisobutylene dissolved in a viscous solvent clearly show the transition from a purely azimuthal flow to a secondary toroidal flow. Comparison of these experimental results with the local linear stability theory shows good agreement between the measured and predicted critical conditions for the onset of the non-inertial cellular instability at small δ, where δ is the eccentricity made dimensionless with the average gap thickness. At higher eccentricities, experiment and local linear stability theory cease to agree. Evidence will be given that this disagreement is due to a global affect, i.e. the convection of stress not included the local theory. Specifically, it is suggested that convection of polymeric stresses in the base flow as well as in the disturbance flow can stabilize the instabilities found in this geometry. Finally, the discovery of a new localized purely elastic instability associated with the recirculation flow in the co-rotating eccentric cylinder geometry is presented.     

PIV measurements of slow flow of a viscoelastic fluid within a porous medium

Particle image velocimetry (PIV) and pressure loss measurements were used to investigate slow flow through a square array of cylinders having a solid fraction of 10%. The test fluids were a Newtonian fluid and a Boger fluid, both of high viscosity such that the Reynolds number did not exceed 0.1. The pressure loss data reveal that the onset of elastic effects occurred at a Deborah number around 0.5 and that flow resistance was up to several times Newtonian values at Deborah numbers up to 3. PIV showed that the transverse velocity profiles for the Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid were the same at Deborah numbers below onset. Above onset, the profiles became skewed, increasingly so as the Deborah number increased. In the wake regions between cylinders in a column, periodic flow structures formed in the spanwise direction. The structures were staggered from column to column, consistent with the skewing and were offset. These flow patterns are the result of an apparent elastic instability.     

Viscous dissipation of a power law fluid in axial flow between isothermal eccentric cylinders

We study the temperature distribution of a power law fluid in a pressure-driven axial flow between isothermal eccentric cylinders in bipolar cylindrical coordinates. We begin our analysis by writing the equation of energy in bipolar cylindrical coordinates. We then obtain a dimensionless algebraic analytic solution for temperature profiles under a steady, laminar, incompressible and fully developed flow [Eq. (64)]. We find that the dimensionless temperature profile depends upon the radius ratio of the inner to outer cylinders, the eccentricity, the angular position, and the power law exponent n. The temperature is a strong function of the gap between the cylinders. The temperature profiles are flat in the middle of the gap and then, near the wall, suddenly drop to the wall temperature.     

Nonhomogeneous Incompressible Herschel–Bulkley Fluid Flows Between Two Eccentric Cylinders

The equations for the nonhomogeneous incompressible Herschel–Bulkley fluid are considered and existence of a weak solution is proved for a boundary-value problem which describes three-dimensional flows between two eccentric cylinders when in each two-dimensional cross-section annulus the flow characteristics are the same. The rheology of such a fluid is defined by a yield stress τ* and a discontinuous stress-strain law. A fluid volume stiffens if its local stresses do not exceed τ*, and a fluid behaves like a nonlinear fluid otherwise. The flow equations are formulated in the stress–velocity–density–pressure setting. Our approach is different from that of Duvaut–Lions developed for the classical Bingham viscoplastic fluids. We do not apply the variational inequality but make use of an approximation of the generalized Bingham fluid by a non-Newtonian fluid with a continuous constitutive law.     

Interaction between two circular cylinders in slow flow of Bingham viscoplastic fluid

The interaction between two circular cylinders was studied in the slow flow of a Bingham viscoplastic fluid in an infinite medium without any inertia effects. The configuration studied is that in which the flow direction is parallel to the centre line of the cylinders. Finite-element numerical simulations were used with an approximation by Papanastasiou's regularisation method. The case of high yield stress effect was particularly examined. The convergence of the solutions was examined in detail. Changes in the rigid zones, kinematics and stresses were determined in relation to the degree of interaction, which is a function of the distance between the cylinders and the effect of yield stress. The results compared with the case of a single cylinder show that yield stress reduces interaction effects. The transition between configurations with interacting cylinders and configuration with isolated cylinders was examined as a function of the effect of yield stress. Correlations were proposed for the drag coefficient and the stability criterion when the cylinders are interacting.     

Purely elastic interfacial instabilities in superposed flow of polymeric fluids

Purely elastic interfacial stability of superposed plane Poiseuille flow of polymeric liquids has been investigated utilizing both asymptotic and numerical techniques. It is shown that these instabilities are caused by an unfavorable jump in the first normal stress difference across the fluid interface. To determine the significance of these instabilities in finite experimental geometries, a comparison between the maximum growth rates of purely elastic instabilities with instabilities driven primarily by a viscosity or a combined viscosity and elasticity difference is made. Based on this comparison, it is shown that purely elastic interfacial instabilities can play a major role in superposed flow of polymeric liquids in finite experimental geometries.     

Flow of a viscoelastic fluid between eccentric cylinders

The velocity field in the annular region between two eccentric cylinders for a second-order fluid is determined. Second-order velocity terms appear only as a result of the interaction between imposed axial and planar motions. When only one of the two motions is imposed by the boundary conditions, the velocity field coincides with that of a Navier-Stokes fluid.The results of the present study are to be used in a future investigation of the stresses, forces, and torques acting on the walls of the cylinders to enable a rheometer based on the present boundary value problem to be suggested.     

Forward roll coating flows of viscoelastic liquids

Roll coating is distinguished by the use of one or more gaps between rotating cylinders to meter and apply a liquid layer to a substrate. Except at low speed, the two-dimensional film splitting flow that occurs in forward roll coating is unstable; a three-dimensional steady flow sets in, resulting in more or less regular stripes in the machine direction. For Newtonian liquids, the stability of the two-dimensional flow is determined by the competition of capillary and viscous forces: the onset of meniscus nonuniformity is marked by a critical value of the capillary number. Although most of the liquids coated industrially are non-Newtonian polymeric solutions and dispersions, most of the theoretical analyses of film splitting flows relied on the Newtonian model. Non-Newtonian behavior can drastically change the nature of the flow near the free surface; when minute amounts of flexible polymer are present, the onset of the three-dimensional instability occurs at much lower speeds than in the Newtonian case.Forward roll coating flow is analyzed here with two differential constitutive models, the Oldroyd-B and the FENE-P equations. The results show that the elastic stresses change the flow near the film splitting meniscus by reducing and eventually eliminating the recirculation present at low capillary number. When the recirculation disappears, the difference of the tangential and normal stresses (i.e., the hoop stress) at the free surface becomes positive and grows dramatically with fluid elasticity, which explains how viscoelasticity destabilizes the flow in terms of the analysis of Graham [M.D. Graham, Interfacial hoop stress and instability of viscoelastic free surface flows, Phys. Fluids 15 (2003) 1702–1710].     

Stability of viscoelastic flow around periodic arrays of cylinders

Low Reynolds number flow of Newtonian and viscoelastic Boger fluids past periodic square arrays of cylinders with a porosity of 0.45 and 0.86 has been studied. Pressure drop measurements along the flow direction as a function of flow rate as well as flow visualization has been performed to investigate the effect of fluid elasticity on stability of this class of flows. It has been shown that below a critical Weissenberg number (We_c), the flow in both porosity cells is a two-dimensional steady flow, however, pressure fluctuations appear above We_c which is 2.95±0.25 for the 0.45 porosity cell and 0.95±0.08 for the higher porosity cell. Specifically, in the low porosity cell as the Weissenberg number is increased above We_c a transition between a steady two-dimensional to a transient three-dimensional flow occurs. However, in the high porosity cell a transition between a steady two-dimensional to a steady three-dimensional flow consisting of periodic cellular structures along the length of the cylinder in the space between the first and the second cylinder occurs while past the second cylinder another transition to a transient three-dimensional flow occurs giving rise to time- dependent cellular structures of various wavelengths along the length of the cylinder. Overall, the experiments indicate that viscoelastic flow past periodic arrays of cylinders of various porosities is susceptible to purely elastic instabilities. Moreover, the instability observed in lower porosity cells where a vortex is present between the cylinders in the base flow is amplifieds spatially, that is energy from the mean flow is continuously transferred to the disturbance flow along the flow direction. This instability gives rise to a rapid increase in flow resistance. In higher porosity cells where a vortex between the cylinders is not present in the base flow, the energy associated with the disturbance flow is not greatly changed along the flow direction past the second cylinder. In addition, it has been shown that in both flow cells the instability is a sensitive function of the relaxation time of the fluid. Hence, the instability in this class of flows is a strong function of the base flow kinematics (i.e., curvature of streamlines near solid surfaces), We and the relaxation time of the fluid.     

A study on laminar motion of a viscous incompressible fluid between two parallel eccentric cylinders

The flow of incompressible viscous fluid between two eccentric cylinders under the action of a difference between the pressures imposed at the ends of the cylinders is analyzed. Using bipolar coordinates, the resulting boundary value problem is solved analytically, and the average flux velocity is calculated for various values of the geometric parameters of the problem.     

The instability mechanism of single and multilayer Newtonian and viscoelastic flows down an inclined plane

The instability mechanism of single and multilayer flow of Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids down an inclined plane has been examined based on a rigorous energy analysis as well as careful examination of the eigenfunctions. These analyses demonstrate that the free surface instability in single and multilayer flows in the limit of longwave disturbances (i.e., the most dangerous disturbances) arise due to the perturbation shear stresses at the free surface. Specifically, for viscoelastic flows, the elastic forces are destabilizing and the main driving force for the instability is the coupling between the base flow and the perturbation velocity and stresses and their gradient at the free surface. For Newtonian flows at finite Re, the driving force for the interfacial instability in the limit of longwaves depends on the placement of the less viscous fluid. If the less viscous fluid is adjacent to the solid surface then the main driving force for the instability is interfacial friction, otherwise the bulk contribution of Reynolds stresses drives the instability. For viscoelastic fluids in the limit of vanishingly small Re, the driving force for the instability is the coupling of the base flow and perturbation velocity and stresses and their gradients across the interface. In the limit of shortwaves the interfacial stability mechanism of flow down inclined plane is the same as plane Poiseuille flows (Ganpule and Khomami 1998, 1999a, b). Received: 20 October 2000/Accepted: 11 January 2001     

Flow instabilities during annular displacement of one non-Newtonian fluid by another

This paper describes an experimental setup for axial laminar flow of liquids in the annulus between two eccentered cylinders. The design uses a conductivity method for measuring peak axial velocities around the annulus, and for the determination of displacement efficiency when displacing one fluid by another (displacement efficiency being defined as the ratio of volume of displaced fluid removed from the annulus, to the volume of the annulus, after a given number of annular volumes have been pumped). In an eccentric annulus, lower axial velocity in the narrow side produces “channeling” of the displacing fluid in the wide side and reduces the displacement efficiency. A positive density contrast between the two fluids can increase the efficiency by promoting azimuthal flow of the (denser) displacing fluid towards the narrow side. In this paper we report that gravity driven azimuthal flow is prone to severe instabilities which accelerate the displacement process but may leave behind an immobile strip of the displaced fluid in the narrow side.     

Flow of wormlike micelle solutions past a confined circular cylinder

In this paper, we present the results of an investigation into the flow of a series of viscoelastic wormlike micelle solutions past a confined circular cylinder. Although this benchmark flow has been studied in great detail for polymer solutions, this paper reports the first experiments to use a viscoelastic wormlike micelle solution as the test fluid. The flow kinematics, stability and pressure drop were examined for two different wormlike micelle solutions over a wide range of Deborah numbers and cylinder to channel aspect ratios. A combination of particle image velocimetry and pressure drop measurements were used to characterize the flow kinematics, while flow-induced birefringence measurements were used to measure the micelle deformation and alignment in the flow. The pressure drop was found to decrease initially due to the shear thinning of the test fluid before increasing at higher flow rates as elastic effects begin to dominate the flow. Above a critical Deborah number, an elastic instability was observed for just one of the test fluids studied, the other remained stable for all Deborah number tested. Flow-induced birefringence and velocimetry measurements showed that observed instability originates in the extensional flow in the wake of the cylinder and appears not as periodic counter-rotating vortices as has been observed in the flow of polymer solutions past circular cylinders, but as a chaotic rupture event in the wake of the cylinder that propagates axially along the cylinder. Reducing the cylinder to channel aspect ratio and the degree of shearing introduced by the channel walls had a weak impact on the stability of the flow. These measurements, when taken in conjunction with previous work on flow of wormlike micelle solutions through a periodic array of cylinders, definitively show that the instability can be attributed to a breakdown of the wormlike micelle solutions in the extensional flow in the wake of the cylinder.     

Identification of a laminar-turbulent interface in partially turbulent flow

Viscous incompressible fluid flow along the clearance between two parallel eccentric circular cylinders is studied numerically. The geometric parameters and the Reynolds number are taken so that the turbulent flow regime takes place in a part of flow, namely, in the zone where the clearance is wide, while the low is laminar in the narrow clearance zone. Criteria using which these zones can be distinguished are discussed.     

Linear stability analysis for plane-Poiseuille flow of an elastoviscoplastic fluid with internal microstructure for large Reynolds numbers

We study the linear stability of Plane Poiseuille flow of an elastoviscoplastic fluid using a revised version of the model proposed by Putz and Burghelea (A.M.V. Putz, T.I. Burghelea, Rheol. Acta 48 (2009) 673–689). The evolution of the microstructure upon a gradual increase of the external forcing is governed by a structural variable (the concentration of solid material elements) which decays smoothly from unity to zero as the stresses are gradually increased beyond the yield point. Stability results are in close conformity with the ones of a pseudo-plastic fluid. Destabilizing effects are related to the presence of an intermediate transition zone where elastic solid elements coexist with fluid elements. This region brings an elastic contribution which does modify the stability of the flow.     

Shear rheology of polymer solutions near the critical condition for elastic instability

The use of constant viscosity, highly elastic polymer solutions, so called Boger fluids, has been remarkably successful in elucidating the behavior of polymeric materials under flowing conditions. However, the behavior of these fluids is still complicated by many different physical processes occurring within a narrow window of observation time and applied shear rate. In this study, we investigate the long-time shear behavior of an ideal Boger fluid: a well characterized, athermal, dilute, binary solution of high molecular weight polystyrene in oligomeric polystyrene. Rheological measurements show that under an applied steady shear flow, this family of polymer solutions undergoes a transient decay of normal stresses on a timescale much longer than the polymer molecule's relaxation time. Rheological and flow visualization results demonstrate that the observed phenomenon is not caused by polymer degradation, phase separation, viscous heating, or secondary flows from elastic instabilities. Although the timescale is much shorter than that associated with polymer migration in the same solutions (MacDonald and Muller, 1996), the appearance of this phenomenon only at the rates where migration has been observed suggests that it may be a prerequisite for observing migration. In addition, we note that through sufficient preshearing of the sample, the normal stress decrease suppresses the elastic instability. These results show that there is considerable uncertainty in choosing the appropriate measure of the fluid relaxation time for consistently modeling the critical condition for the elastic instability, the decay of normal stresses, and the migration of polymer species.     

Linear stability and dynamics of viscoelastic flows using time-dependent numerical simulations

Ultimately, numerical simulation of viscoelastic flows will prove most useful if the calculations can predict the details of steady-state processing conditions as well as the linear stability and non-linear dynamics of these states. We use finite element spatial discretization coupled with a semi-implicit θ-method for time integration to explore the linear and non-linear dynamics of two, two-dimensional viscoelastic flows: plane Couette flow and pressure-driven flow past a linear, periodic array of cylinders in a channel. For the upper convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid, the linear stability analysis for the plane Couette flow can be performed in closed form and the two most dangerous, although always stable, eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are known in closed form. The eigenfunctions are non-orthogonal in the usual inner product and hence, the linear dynamics are expected to exhibit non-normal (non-exponential) behavior at intermediate times. This is demonstrated by numerical integration and by the definition of a suitable growth function based on the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors. Transient growth of the disturbances at intermediate times is predicted by the analysis for the UCM fluid and is demonstrated in linear dynamical simulations for the Oldroyd-B model. Simulations for the fully non-linear equations show the amplification of this transient growth that is caused by non-linear coupling between the non-orthogonal eigenvectors. The finite element analysis of linear stability to two-dimensional disturbances is extended to the two-dimensional flow past a linear, periodic array of cylinders in a channel, where the steady-state motion itself is known only from numerical calculations. For a single cylinder or widely separated cylinders, the flow is stable for the range of Deborah number (De) accessible in the calculations. Moreover, the dependence of the most dangerous eigenvalue on De≡λV/R resembles its behavior in simple shear flow, as does the spatial structure of the associated eigenfunction. However, for closely spaced cylinders, an instability is predicted with the critical Deborah number De_c scaling linearly with the dimensionless separation distance L between the cylinders, that is, the critical Deborah number De_Lc≡λV/L is shown to be an O(1) constant. The unstable eigenfunction appears as a family of two-dimensional vortices close to the channel wall which travel downstream. This instability is possibly caused by the interaction between a shear mode which approaches neutral stability for De ≫ 1 and the periodic modulation caused by the presence of the cylinders. Nonlinear time-dependent simulations show that this secondary flow eventually evolves into a stable limit cycle, indicative of a supercritical Hopf bifurcation from the steady base state.     

Nonisothermal steady flow of a viscoplastic liquid between two coaxial rotating cylinders

Rotational viscosimeters are widely used to determine liquid viscosity. The technique for processing the experimental data is based fundamentally on the analytic solution of the problem of isothermal flow of a viscous liquid between two rotating cylinders.If in the course of the experiment the heat released due to the internal friction leads to significant heating, then the processing of the experimental results using the equations obtained on the assumption of isothermocity of the flow may lead to large errors. The dissipative heating may be reduced by reducing the angular velocity of rotation of the cylinder; however extensive reduction of the angular velocity is not desirable, since this leads to an increase of the measurement relative error. In addition, there is the possibility of conducting the experiments with a wide variation of the angular velocities in order to identify the structural-rheological peculiarities of the liquid. In the latter case we must be able to separate the purely thermal effects from the influence of the rheological factors. All these questions are discussed in detail in [1]. The authors of [1] obtained the solution of the problem of nonisothermal flow of a Newtonian fluid between two rotating cylinders and gave a technique for processing the experimental data which takes account of the dissipative heating of the fluid. The present paper pursues the same objective for a visco-plastic fluid.An attempt to solve the problem of nonisothermal flow of a viscoplastic fluid was made by Dzhafarov in [2], where the problem was solved in two versions. In the first version it was considered that the viscosity varies hyperbolically with the temperature and the gap between the cylinders is small in comparison with the radius of the inner cylinder. As a result of the linearization of the equations of motion and heat balance, it turned out that in fact the problem of Couette flow of a viscoplastic fluid was solved rather than the original problem. In this case, naturally, such a characteristic of the flow of a viscoplastic fluid in an annular gap as the possibility of the formation of an elastic zone was not covered. In the second version the problem was solved under the assumption that the viscosity is independent of the temperature and the angular velocity is small.In the present study the problem is solved without the limitations discussed above on the angular velocity, the fluid visoosity, and the gap between the cylinders. In this case we consider two types of temperature boundary conditions: a) constant temperatures are specified on the surfaces of the cylinders, which in the general case may be different; and b) a constant temperature is given on the surface of the outer cylinder and the inner cylinder is thermally insulated.     

Finite-Element simulation of the start-up problem for a viscoelastic fluid in an eccentric rotating cylinder geometry using a third-order upwind scheme

We numerically simulate the flow field of a dilute polymeric solution using a finitely extendable nonlinear elastic (FENE) dumbbell model. A third-order accurate finite element upwind scheme is used to discretize the convection term in the FENE dumbbell equations for the configuration tensor. The numerical scheme also avoids unphysical negative values for diagonal components of the configuration tensor. The FENE dumbbell equations are solved along with the momentum and continuity equations at small Reynolds numbers with an accuracy of second order in time. In this work we apply this numerical technique to the motion of a viscoelastic fluid in an eccentric rotating cylinder geometry. We obtain the velocity and the polymer contribution to the stress fields as a function of time, and also examine the steady solutions. A particular focus is the influence of coupling between changes in polymer conformation and changes in the flow that occurs as the polymer concentration is increased to a level where the polymer contribution to the zero-shear viscosity of the solution is equal to that of the solvent.This research was supported under grants from the National Science Foundation and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.     

Perturbation theory for viscoelastic fluids between eccentric rotating cylinders

The circumferential and radial profiles of velocity, pressure and stress are derived for the flow of model viscoelastic liquids between two slightly eccentric cylinders with the inner one rotating. Singular perturbation methods are used to derive expansions valid for small gaps between the cylinders, but for all Deborah numbers. Results for Newtonian, second-order, Criminale-Ericksen-Filbey, upper-convected Maxwell, and White-Metzner constitutive equation separate the effects of elasticity, memory, and shear thinning on the development of the large stress gradients that hinder numerical solutions with these models in more complicated geometries. The effect of the constitutive equation on the critical Deborah number for flow separation is presented.