Reentrant corner singularities in non-Newtonian flow. I: Theory (Q1116752)

Biorthogonal series expansions are used to study the creeping flow of a corotational Maxwell fluid in plane reentrant and non-reentrant sectors. The governing equations are formulated in terms of stream function and Airy stress function only, the radial parts of which are determined by an infinite system of fourth-order nonlinear ordinary differential equations which are seen to be singular perturbations of the linear second-order equations for Stokes flow. Exact formal solutions in logarithmic series are derived, but do not readily enable the asymptotics of the corner singularities to be studied. Instead, approximate methods based on Picard linearization and dominant component analysis are used to decouple the system, whence the singularities are studied in terms of generalized hypergeometric equations and Meijer G-functions. Certain conditions on the roots of associated quartic equations are derived, the satisfaction of which would indicate the existence of lip vortices in a reentrant sector and the integrability of stress in a neighbourhood of the corner.