Bifurcation analysis and amplitude equations for viscoelastic convective fluids

Summary The possible bifurcations of a convective instability in viscoelastic fluid are studied. The viscoelastic behaviour is modelized by means of the Oldroyd type fluid whose parameters can be adjusted to suit a large class of polymeric fluids. We analyse in some detail bifurcations of codimension one (stationary or oscillatory convection) and codimension two for such kind of fluids. By a weak nonlinear analysis, the coefficients of the amplitude equations corresponding to the different bifurcations are also determined. It has been found that the nature of the convective solution depends crucially on both the viscoelastic parameters and the constitutive equation used to describe the fluid.