On the stability of the simple shear flow of a Johnson-Segalman fluid (Q1297528)

The authors investigate a simple shear flow of Johnson-Segalman fluid with added Newtonian viscosity. The stability of piecewise linear steady-state solutions is studied. For different initial conditions, the authors derive the governing equation and boundary conditions, and investigate the time-dependent flows by the mixed finite elements and by the Galerkin method. It is shown that, in addition to the standard linear solution for velocity, there is an uncountable infinity of piecewise linear steady-state solutions, in a certain range of velocity of the moving plate. The numerical results show that the piecewise smooth solutions are unstable if they contain segments in which the local shear rate corresponds to the negative-slope branch of steady shear stress/shear rate curve. The time-dependent solutions are bounded and converge to different stable steady-state solutions, depending on initial perturbations.