On the stability of a dumbbell molecule in a continuous squeezing flow (Q1069803)

As a brief sequel to our previous stability analysis of dumbbell molecule in torsional flow [see the review above (Zbl 0584.76043)] we demonstrate that the motion of a dumbbell molecule in a continuous squeezing flow is also unstable at sufficiently large Weissenberg number. The cause of instability in the present case, however, is quite different from the previous case. The mechanism responsible for triggering the instability is mainly attributed to the additional elongational flow component over the basic shear flow. The present flow situation is also different from the previous case in that the system is stochastically non-stationary, hence no steady-state average quantities can be obtained statistically.