Local linear stability characteristics of viscoelastic periodic channel flow. (Q5931841)

The local linear stability analysis is given for viscous and viscoelastic flows through a periodically constricted channel. The research is focused on relatively small values of channel wall amplitude. The channel wavelengh is assumed to be much larger than the most possible disturbance, elasticity numbers are small. As a viscoelastic constitutive equation, the upper convected Maxwell model is used. The governing equations and dimensionless parameters are presented. The domain perturbation analysis is used to generate the steady state solution. The problem is mathematically reduced to a differential eigenvalue problem which is discretized numerically using a pseudo-spectral Chebyshev collocation technique. The influence of periodic modulation on most dangerous eigenmodes is investigated for the plane channel flow. The following results are presented: domain perturbation analysis, linear stability results for Newtonian fluid, stability analysis for UCM fluid, and results for eigenspectrum of the flow in purely elastic regime.