Excess pressure drop and drag calculations for strain-hardening fluids with mild shear-thinning: Contraction and falling sphere problems

This study extends our previous analysis on pressure-drops for strain-hardening Boger-type fluids in contraction flow settings, into those fluids that manifest mild shear-thinning properties. Numerical simulations are compared and contrasted for a variety of constitutive equations, categorised through their differences in viscometric functional response, considering application on 4:1:4 contraction-expansion flow and 2:1 flow past a sphere. Here, prior results on pressure-drop enhancement for constant shear-viscosity fluids have revealed the counter-influences of first normal stress differences and extensional viscosity. The present comparative work advances this study by selectively including the effects of shear-thinning. Suitable models to accomplish this are chosen from the class of Phan-Thien/Tanner (PTT) models, with cross-reference to FENE-models and Oldroyd-B. Furthermore, the work explores the falling sphere problem with comparison of the drag coefficient factor for various implementations. The numerical computations are performed by appealing to a well-founded hybrid finite element/finite volume algorithm, using structured triangular meshing, semi-implicit time-stepping and subcell technology. The cell-vertex finite volume scheme is particularly suited to the solution of the stress subsystem, and invokes fluctuation-distribution for upwinding and median-dual-cells for source-term representation.