THREE-DIMENSIONAL EXTRUDATE SWELL: FORMULATION WITH THE STREAM TUBE METHOD AND NUMERICAL RESULTS FOR A NEWTONIAN FLUID

Stream tube analysis, already applied to two-dimensional extrudate swell problems involving rate and integral constitutive equations for incompressible fluids, is now considered in the problem of free surface determination in a three-dimensional flow situation. The method allows computation of the unknown free surface by considering only a ‘peripheral stream tube’ limited by the wall and the jet surface and an inner stream surface. Those boundary surfaces are determined by considering the conservation equations together with boundary condition equations, solved by the Levenberg/Marquatdt optimization algorithm. The method leads to a considerable reduction in the number of degrees of freedom and the storage area. As in a previous study in the two-dimensional case, singularity problems in the vicinity of the junction points between the wall and the free surface are avoided. However, the numerical method still allows evaluati on of stress peaks due to the singularity at the exit, as may be observed for results obtained with a Newtonian fluid in a duct of square cross-section.