Numerical instability of time-dependent flows (Q1199368)

The paper concerns the numerical study of the time-dependent planar Couette flows of Maxwell, Oldroyd-B and FENE fluids and seeks the conditions under which the numerical discretizations of the equations lead to false instabilities. For creeping flows it is shown that the numerical instability criterion expressed in terms of a Weissenberg number is determined by the relative refinement in the cross-stream and streamwise directions. This instability is less pronounced for the FENE equation. In the presence of inertia there is a more pronounced numerical instability for the upper-convected Maxwell equation, but this can be removed by the presence of a small viscous stress component. The paper also computes the flow in an axisymmetric cone-shaped entry and concludes that the increase of grid lines in the streamwise direction with constant crosswise resolution results in a decrease of the critical Weissenberg number, and this trend is reversed when the cross-stream resolution increases with constant streamwise resolution.