Shear flows of a new class of power-law fluids (Q351958)

The authors study a class of models of incompressible fluids which are constitutively defined by the relation \(\mathbb {D}=[\alpha (1+\beta \| \mathbb {T}_\delta \| ^2)^n+\gamma ]\mathbb {T}_\delta \) for the symmetric part of the velocity field \(\mathbb {D}\) and the deviator \(\mathbb {T}_\delta \) of the Cauchy stress \(\mathbb {T}\). They assume that \(\alpha ,\beta >0\), \(\gamma \geq 0\) and \(n\in \mathbb {R}\) are given constants. The relation for \(\mathbb {D}\) is not in general injective and so \(\mathbb {T}_\delta \) cannot be expressed as a function of \(\mathbb {D}\). The studied models are generalizations of models considered in [\textit{J. Málek} et al., Int. J. Eng. Sci. 48, No. 12, 1907--1924 (2010; Zbl 1231.76073)], where it was assumed that \(\gamma =0\). The flow of the fluid is described by the balance of linear momentum \[ \rho \frac {\text{d}\mathbf {v}}{\text{d}t}=\text{div}\mathbb {T} +\rho \mathbf {b} \] for velocity \(\mathbf {v}\). The density \(\rho \) and the external body force per unit mass \(\mathbf {b}\) are given. The problem is equipped with several types of boundary conditions, namely no-slip, Navier-slip, and free-slip boundary conditions are considered. For special kinds of flows between two infinite parallel plates, such as planar Couette flows, planar Poiseuille flows and planar Couette-Poiseuille flows, the exact solutions are computed. It is shown that the solutions do not need to be unique.