The visco-elastic Ekman layer (Q1069786)

Solutions are obtained for the flow in an Ekman layer in a visco-elastic fluid using various constitutive relations. For some models (those which exhibit no shear thinning in simple shear flow) it is found that the solution is identical with the Newtonian solution for all Weissenberg numbers. For other models it is shown that the solution differs from its Newtonian counterpart and may cease to exist when a critical Weissenberg number is exceeded. In these cases, when the solution exists it is found that the visco-elastic Ekman layer is thinner than the Newtonian Ekman layer.