Extrudate swell for a round jet with large surface tension (Q799419)

A perturbation technique is used to investigate the problem of extrudate swell of a round jet of a viscoelastic fluid. The perturbation problems are solved by a finite-element method (Galerkin) through second order in the flow rate parameter for small flow rates. It is shown that irrespective of what the constitutive equation is, the jet first contracts if the radius of the pipe is sufficiently small; the contraction occurs for less than 1/20 of the jet radius and is followed by a swell. The contraction is often too small to observe. Of the five different contributions to the jet shape at second order, only the viscoelastic one persists in the limit as the pipe radius tends to zero.