Viscoelastic flow of polymer solutions around a periodic, linear array of cylinders: Comparisons of predictions for microstructure and flow fields (Q1303218)

Numerical simulation is used to investigate the flow of polymer solutions around a periodic, linear array of cylinders by using three constitutive equations derived from kinetic theory of dilute polymer solutions: the Giesekus model; the finitely extensible, nonlinear elastic dumbbell model with Peterlin's approximation (FENE-P); and the FENE dumbbell model of Chilcott-Rallison. Finite element simulations are performed by using two different formulations: the elastic-viscous split-stress gradient method and a new discrete variant of this formulation, in which the elliptic stabilization term is added only to the discrete version of the momentum equation, and the constitutive equation is solved directly in terms of the polymer contribution to the stress tensor. The results of simulations are analyzed in detail.