The time-dependent extrudate-swell problem of an Oldroyd-B fluid with slip along the wall

Abstract

We demonstrate that viscoelasticity combined with nonlinear slip acts as a storage of elastic energy generating oscillations of the pressure drop similar to those observed experimentally in extrusion instabilities. We consider the time-dependent axisymmetric incompressible Poiseuille and extrudate-swell flows of an Oldroyd-B fluid. We assume that slip occurs along the wall of the die following a slip equation which relates the shear stress to the velocity at the wall and exhibits a maximum and a minimum. We first study the stability of the one-dimensional axisymmetric Poiseuille flow by means of a one-dimensional linear stability analysis and time-dependent calculations. The numerically predicted instability regimes agree well with the linear stability ones. The calculations reveal that periodic solutions are obtained when an unstable steady-state is perturbed and that the amplitude and the period of the oscillations are increasing functions of the Weissenberg number. We then continue to numerically solve the time-dependent two-dimensional axisymmetric Poiseuille and extrudate-swell flows using the elastic-viscous split stress method for the integration of the constitutive equation. Again, oscillations are observed in the unstable regime

consequently, the surface of the extrudate is wavy. However, the amplitude and the period of the pressure drop oscillations are considerably smaller than in the one-dimensional flow. The most important phenomenon revealed by our two-dimensional calculations is that the flow in the die is periodic in the axial direction. © 1998 The Society of Rheology.