VISCOELASTIC MODELLING OF ENTRANCE FLOW USING MULTIMODE LEONOV MODEL

A simulation of planar 2D flow of a viscoelastic fluid employing the Leonov constitutive equation has been presented. Triangular finite elements with lower-order interpolations have been employed for velocity and pressure as well as the extra stress tensor arising from the constitutive equation. A generalized Lesaint–Raviart method has been used for an upwind discretization of the material derivative of the extra stress tensor in the constitutive equation. The upwind scheme has been further strengthened in our code by also introducing a non-consistent streamline upwind Petrov–Galerkin method to modify the weighting function of the material derivative term in the variational form of the constitutive equation. A variational equation for configurational incompressibility of the Leonov model has also been satisfied explicitly. The corresponding software has been used to simulate planar 2D entrance flow for a 4:1 abrupt contraction up to a Deborah number of 670 (Weissenberg number of 6·71) for a rubber compound using a three-mode Leonov model. The predicted entrance loss is found to be in good agreement with experimental results from the literature. Corresponding comparisons for a commercial-grade polystyrene, however, indicate that the predicted entrance loss is low by a factor of about four, indicating a need for further investigation. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two-dimensional viscoelastic flows: experimentation and modeling

Extensive experimental data on the birefringence in converging and diverging flows of a polymeric melt have been obtained. The birefringence and pressure drop measurements were carried out in working cells of planar geometry having different contraction angles and contraction ratios. For investigation of diverging or abrupt expansion flow, the direction of flow in the cells was reversed. The theoretical predictions are based upon the Leonov constitutive equation and a finite element scheme with streamwise integration.In contrast to Newtonian and second-order fluids, viscoelastic fluids at high shear rates show significant differences in pressure drop and birefringence (i.e. stresses) in converging and diverging flows. For a constant flow rate, the pressure drop is higher and the birefringence smaller in diverging flows than in converging flows. This difference increases with increasing flow rate. Further, for the same contraction ratio but different contraction angles, the birefringence maximum increases considerably with contraction angle. In addition, an increase in contraction ratio has the same effect.The viscoelastic constitutive equation of Leonov has been shown to describe all the above viscoelastic effects observed in the experiments. In general, a reasonable agreement between theory and experiment has been obtained, which shows the usefulness of the Leonov model in describing actual flows.     

Practical comparison of differential viscoelastic constitutive equations in finite element analysis of planar 4:1 contraction flow

Finite element modeling of planar 4:1 contraction flow (isothermal incompressible and creeping) around a sharp entrance corner is performed for favored differential constitutive equations such as the Maxwell, Leonov, Giesekus, FENE-P, Larson, White-Metzner models and the Phan Thien-Tanner model of exponential and linear types. We have implemented the discrete elastic viscous stress splitting and streamline upwinding algorithms in the basic computational scheme in order to augment stability at high flow rate. For each constitutive model, we have obtained the upper limit of the Deborah number under which numerical convergence is guaranteed. All the computational results are analyzed according to consequences of mathematical analyses for constitutive equations from the viewpoint of stability. It is verified that in general the constitutive equations proven globally stable yield convergent numerical solutions for higher Deborah number flows. Therefore one can get solutions for relatively high Deborah number flows when the Leonov, the Phan Thien-Tanner, or the Giesekus constitutive equation is employed as the viscoelastic field equation. The close relationship of numerical convergence with mathematical stability of the model equations is also clearly demonstrated.     

Orthogonal superposition of small and large amplitude oscillations upon steady shear flow of polymer fluids

The orthogonal superposition of small and large amplitude oscillations upon steady shear flow of elastic fluids has been considered. Theoretical results, obtained by numerical methods, are based on the Leonov viscoelastic constitutive equation. Steady-state components, amplitudes and phase angles of the oscillatory components of the shear stress, the first and second normal stress differences as functions of shear rate, deformation amplitude and frequency have been calculated. These oscillatory components include the first and third harmonic of the shear stresses and the second harmonic of the normal stresses. In the case of small amplitude superposition, the effect of the steady shear flow upon the frequency-dependent storage modulus and dynamic viscosity has been determined and compared with experimental data available in literature for polymeric solutions. The predicted results have been found to be in fair agreement with the experimental data at low shear rates and only in qualitative agreement at high shear rates and low frequencies. A comparison of the present theoretical results has also been made with the predictions of other theories.In the case of large amplitude superposition, the effect of oscillations upon the steady shear flow characteristics has been determined, indicating that the orthogonal superposition has less influence on the steady state shear stresses and the first difference of normal stresses than the parallel superposition. However, in the orthogonal superposition a more pronounced influence has been observed for the second difference of normal stresses.     

Elongational-flow predictions of the Leonov constitutive equation

The basic thermodynamic ideas from rubber-elasticity theory which Leonov employed to derive his constitutive model are herein summarized. Predictions of the single-mode version are presented for homogeneous elongational flows including stress growth following start-up of steady flow, stress decay following sudden stretching and following cessation of steady flow, elastic recovery following cessation of steady flow, energy storage in steady-state flow, and the velocity profile in constantforce spinning. Using parameters of the multiple-mode version which fit the linearviscoelastic data, the Leonov-model predictions of elongational stress growth during, and elastic recovery following, steady elongation are calculated numerically and compared to the experimental results for Melt I and to the Wagner model. It is found that the Leonov model, as originally formulated, agrees qualitatively with the data, but not quantitatively; the Wagner model gives quantitative agreement, but requires much nonlinear data with which to fit model parameters. Quantitative agreement can be obtained with the Leonov model, if the nonequilibrium potential which relates recoverable strain to strain rate is adjusted empirically. This can most simply be done by making each relaxation time dependent upon the recoverable strain. The Leonov model, unlike the Wagner model, is derived from an entropic constitutive equation, which is advantageous for calculating stored elastic energy or viscous dissipation. The Leonov model also has an appealingly simple differential form, similar to the upper-convected Maxwell model, which, in numerical calculations, may be an important advantage over the integral Wagner model.     

Flow distribution in parallel and reverse flow manifolds

Numerical predictions of the flow distribution in parallel and reverse flow manifold systems have been obtained by a novel finite-difference procedure. A one-dimensional elliptic formulation is proposed. An iterative numerical scheme solves the differential equations for momentum in the longitudinal direction and continuity, while in the lateral direction an integral equation for momentum is solved. The predicted pressure distributions compare well with the available experimental results. A parametric computation has been performed to demonstrate the effect of the governing non-dimensional parameters on the flow distribution.     

Anomalous predictions of pressure drop and heat transfer in ducts of arbitrary cross-section with modified power law fluids

 The apparent viscosities of purely viscous non-Newtonian fluids are shear rate dependent. At low shear rates, many of such fluids exhibit Newtonian behaviour while at higher shear rates non-Newtonian, power law characteristics exist. Between these two ranges, the fluid's viscous properties are neither Newtonian or power law. Utilizing an apparent viscosity constitutive equation called the “Modified Power Law” which accounts for the above behavior, solutions have been obtained for forced convection flows. A shear rate similarity parameter is identified which specifies both the shear rate range for a given fluid and set of operating conditions and the appropriate solution for that range. The results of numerical solutions for the friction factor–Reynolds number product and for the Nusselt number as a function of a dimensionless shear rate parameter have been presented for forced fully developed laminer duct flows of different cross-sections with modified power law fluids. Experimental data is also presented showing the suitability of the “Modified Power Law” constitutive equation to represent the apparent viscosity of various polymer solutions. Received on 21 August 2000     

Simulation of planar converging flow of a Leonov viscoelastic fluid

An efficient finite element algorithm is presented to simulate the planar converging flow for the viscoelastic fluid of the Leonov model. The governing equation set, composed of the continuity, momentum and constitutive equations for the Leonov fluid flow, is conveniently decoupled and a two-stage cyclic iteration technique is employed to solve the velocity and elastic strain fields separately. Artificial viscosity terms are imposed on the momentum equations to relax the elastic force and data smoothing is performed on the iterative calculations for velocities to further stabilize the numerical computations. The calculated stresses agree qualitatively with the experimental measurements and other numerically simulated results available in the literature. Computations were successful to moderately high values of Deborah number of about 27·5.     

An investigation on internal thermal flow of non-Newtonian fluid

In the present paper an unsteady thermal flow of non-Newtonian fluid is investigated which is of the fiow into axisymmetric mould cavity. In the second part an unsteady thermal flow of upper-convected Maxwell fluid is studied, For the flow into mould cavity the constitutive equation of power-law fluid is used as a rheological model of polymer fluid. The apparent viscosity is considered as a function of shear rate and temperature. A characteristic viscosity is introduced in order to avoid the nonlinearity due to the temperature dependence of the apparent viscosity. As the viscosity of the fluid is relatively high the flow of the thermal fluid can be considered as a flow of fully developed velocity field. However, the temperature field of the fluid fiow is considered as an unsteady one. The governing equations are constitutive equation, momentum equation of steady flow and energy conservation equation of non-steady form. The present system of equations has been solved numerically by the splitting differen     

Finite element technique to solve the elastic strain for Leonov fluid flow

The finite element method is used to find the elastic strain (and thus the stress) for given velocity fields of the Leonov model fluid. With a simple linearization technique and the Galerkin formulation, the quasi-linear coupled first-order hyperbolic differential equations together with a non-linear equality constraint are solved over the entire domain based on a weighted residual scheme. The proposed numerical scheme has yielded efficient and accurate convective integrations for both the planar channel and the diverging radial flows for the Leonov model fluid. Only the strain in the inflow plane is required to be prescribed as the boundary conditions. In application, it can be conveniently incorporated in an existing finite element algorithm to simulate the Leonov viscoelastic fluid flow with more complex geometry in which the velocity field is not known a priori and an iterative procedure is needed.     

Decoupled second-order transient schemes for the flow of viscoelastic fluids without a viscous solvent contribution

The simulation of transient flows is relevant in several applications involving viscoelastic fluids. In the last decades, much effort has been spent on deriving time-marching schemes able to efficiently solve the governing equations at low computational cost. In this direction, decoupling schemes, where the global system is split into smaller subsystems, have been particularly successful. However, most of these techniques only work if inertia and/or a large Newtonian solvent contribution is included in the modeling. This is not the case for polymer melts or concentrated polymer solutions.In this work, we propose two second-order time-integration schemes for discretizing the momentum balance as well as the constitutive equation, based on a Gear and a Crank–Nicolson scheme. The solution of the momentum and continuity equations is decoupled from the constitutive one. The stress tensor term in the momentum balance is replaced by its space-continuous but time-discretized form of the constitutive equation through an Euler scheme implicit in the velocity. This adds velocity unknowns in the momentum equation thus an updating of the velocity field is possible even if inertia and solvent viscosity are not included in the model. To further reduce computational costs, the non-linear relaxation term in the constitutive equation is taken explicitly leading to a linear system of equations for each stress component.Four benchmark problems are considered to test the numerical schemes. The results show that a Crank–Nicolson based discretization for the momentum equation produces oscillations when combined with a Crank–Nicolson based scheme for the constitutive equation whereas, if a Gear based scheme is implemented for the constitutive equation, the stability is found to be dependent on the specific problem. However, the Gear based scheme applied to the momentum balance combined with both second-order methods used for the constitutive equation is stable and accurate and performs much better than a first-order Euler scheme. Finally, a numerical proof of the second-order convergence is also carried out.     

Draw resonance in film casting of viscoelastic fluids: A linear stability analysis

In order to understand the role of viscoelasticity on draw resonance in the isothermal film casting process, a steady state analysis and a linear stability analysis for three-dimensional flow disturbances have been conducted. The constitutive equation used is a modified convected Maxwell model, with shear-rate dependent viscosity and fluid characteristic time. The numerical results indicate that the flow is stable below a lower critical draw ratio and above an upper critical draw ratio. Shear thinning in viscosity reduces the lower critical draw ratio and somewhat increases the upper critical draw ratio—thereby enlarging the region of instability. Slower shear reduction in fluid characteristic time dramatically decreases the upper critical draw ratio but has no significant effect on the lower critical draw ratio; therefore, fluids with higher characteristic time are more stable.     

A constitutive equation for a dilute solution of Hookean dumbbells with approximate hydrodynamic interaction

In a recent series of papers, Öttinger's consistently averaged hydrodynamic interaction has been shown to yield shear-rate dependent viscosity and normal stress coefficients in steady shear flow for dilute solutions of elastic dumbbells and chains. Even more recently, Fan has numerically solved the diffusion equation for the Hookean dumbbell with complete hydrodynamic interaction and he has compared his results with those of the Öttinger model.In this paper, a new approximation¹ for the Oseen—Burgers tensor is proposed where the configuration-dependent terms are replaced by appropriate averages rather than averaging the Oseen—Burgers tensor as a whole as in the Öttinger model. The proposed model leads to a differential constitutive equation which at low shear rates is similar to the Giesekus constitutive equation for a Hookean dumbbell with anistropic drag and anisotropic Brownian motion. The steady shear viscosity and normal stress coefficients for the proposed model are shear-rate dependent and are in close agreement with Fan's numerical calculations. Elongational viscosity for both positive and negative elongation rates are calculated.     

Short Communication Finite Element Analysis of Visco-elastic Flow Under High Shear Rate Using the GSMAC-method

In the present work, we carry out a finite element analysis of visco-elastic flows for the multi-mode Giesekus model at high shear rales flow. We have already proposed a new numerical scheme suitable for the analysis of visco-elastic fluids in the previous paper. It is mainly composed of two parts: the MUSCL (Monotone Upstream-centered Scheme for Conservation Law)-TVD (Total Variation Diminishing) for the numerical analysis of the constitutive equation and the GSMAC (Generalized Simplified Maker and Cell)-FEM (Finite Element Method) for the momentum equation. We apply the new scheme for the flows through the contraction plane for the multi-mode Giesekus model that considers eight relaxation modes. It shows suitable matching with experimental data at low shear rates, and we confirm that the results are stable at high shear rates.     

Influence of wall slip on extrudate swell: a boundary element investigation

This paper reports a numerical study of the extrudate swell by a transient Boundary Element Method (BEM). Furthermore the fluid, which is modeled by a differential constitutive equation, is allowed to slip at the wall, where the slip velocity is a prescribed function of the wall shear stress. This function is a curve fit of the extensive data of Ramamurthy on linear low density polyethylene which incorporates two parameters: a critical wall shear stress above which slip occurs, and another parameter which governs the shape of the slip velocity versus shear stress curve. The results show that wall slip reduces both the amount of extrudate swell and the critical Weissenberg number above which our numerical scheme no longer converges.     

聚合物熔体的非仿射网络结构模型及其数值解

假设聚合物熔体的缠结网络形变是非仿射的，运用瞬态网络结构原理。并利用Liu提出的动态速率方程以及上随体Maxwell本构方程来建立一个适合于振动剪切作用下的聚合物熔全非仿射网络结构模型。利用这一模型来研究振动剪切作用下LDPE和HDPE熔体的流变行为。研究表明，在一种合理的初始简化条件下可以获得模型的数值解。将理论预测值与实验值进行比较后得知二者具有良好的吻合性，从而简化了模型的计算过程。同时，通过比较得知所建立的非仿射网络结构本构方程比仿射网络结构本构方程的精确度要高，而且在振动力场作用下。具有长支链的LDPE熔体有少量的非仿射网络形变，而没有长支链的HDPE熔体则有较多的非仿射网络形变。因此在建立振动力场作用下聚烯烃熔体本构方程时应充分考虑聚合物熔体网络的非仿射形变。     

On the predictive/fitting capabilities of the advanced differential constitutive equations for branched LDPE melts

Predictive/fitting capabilities of the XPP, PTT–XPP and modified Leonov constitutive equations are compared in both steady as well as transient shear and uniaxial elongational flows using two, highly branched LDPE materials (Escorene LD165BW1 and Bralen RB0323). It has been found that even if all three tested models exhibit very good fitting capability for steady uniaxial extensional viscosity curve, their predicting capabilities may differ significantly for shear viscosity as well as first and second normal stress coefficients.     

A finite element method for computing the flow of multi-mode viscoelastic fluids: comparison with experiments

The numerical computation of viscoelastic fluid flows with differential constitutive equations presents various difficulties. The first one lies in the numerical convergence of the complex numerical scheme solving the non-linear set of equations. Due to the hybrid type of these equations (elliptic and hyperbolic), geometrical singularities such as reentrant corner or die induce stress singularities and hence numerical problems. Another difficulty is the choice of an appropriate constitutive equation and the determination of rheological constants. In this paper, a quasi-Newton method is developed for a fluid obeying a multi-mode Phan-Thien and Tanner constitutive equation. A confined convergent geometry followed by the extrudate swell has been considered. Numerical results obtained for two-dimensional or axisymmetric flows are compared to experimental results (birefringence patterns or extrudate swell) for a linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) and a low density polyethylene (LDPE).     

Remarks on orthogonal superposition of small amplitude oscillations on steady shear flow

The paper demonstrates that experimental data (Simmons, 1968) for orthogonal superposition of small amplitude oscillations on steady shear flow, coincide well enough with the theoretical predictions (Leonov et al., 1976) of simple multi-modal version of Leonov model (Leonov, 1976, 1987; Leonov et al., 1976). It was also shown that the recent theoretical calculations (Wong and Isayev, 1989) of the problem, which used the same Leonov model, are wrong.