Decoupled approach for the problem of viscoelastic fluid flow of PTT modelI: continuous stresses

We present in this work a numerical analysis of a decoupled approach with c ontinuous stresses for the viscoelastic fluid flows obeying the PTT model. The Streamline Upwind Petrov-Galerkin is used to treat the transport part o f the equations. This model introduces supplementary difficulties linked to the non-linearities of the exponential type present in the constitutive eq uation. In exchange, it seems to be more realistic and gives best numerical results. The method is tested on the classical benchmark problem: Stick-Sl ip how. Numerical results show that our method is remarkably stable and no upper Weissenberg limit number was encountered for reasonable values of eps ilon, a material-depending parameter. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A.. All r ights reserved.