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Pressure-driven flows of viscoelastic fluids in narrow non-uniform geometries are common in physiological flows and various industrial applications. For such flows, one of the main interests is understanding the relationship between the flow rate$$q$$and the pressure drop$$\Delta p$$, which, to date, is studied primarily using numerical simulations. We analyse the flow of the Oldroyd-B fluid in slowly varying arbitrarily shaped, contracting channels and present a theoretical framework for calculating the$$q-\Delta p$$relation. We apply lubrication theory and consider the ultra-dilute limit, in which the velocity profile remains parabolic and Newtonian, resulting in a one-way coupling between the velocity and polymer conformation tensor. This one-way coupling enables us to derive closed-form expressions for the conformation tensor and the flow rate–pressure drop relation for arbitrary values of the Deborah number ($$De$$). Furthermore, we provide analytical expressions for the conformation tensor and the$$q-\Delta p$$relation in the high-Deborah-number limit, complementing our previous low-Deborah-number lubrication analysis. We reveal that the pressure drop in the contraction monotonically decreases with$$De$$, having linear scaling at high Deborah numbers, and identify the physical mechanisms governing the pressure drop reduction. We further elucidate the spatial relaxation of elastic stresses and pressure gradient in the exit channel following the contraction and show that the downstream distance required for such relaxation scales linearly with$$De$$.
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Pressure-driven flow of the viscoelastic Oldroyd-B fluid in narrow non-uniform geometries: analytical results and comparison with simulations
We analyse the pressure-driven flow of the Oldroyd-B fluid in slowly varying arbitrarily shaped, narrow channels and present a theoretical framework for calculating the relationship between the flow rate $$q$$ and pressure drop $$\Delta p$$ . We first identify the characteristic scales and dimensionless parameters governing the flow in the lubrication limit. Employing a perturbation expansion in powers of the Deborah number ( $De$ ), we provide analytical expressions for the velocity, stress and the $$q$$ – $$\Delta p$$ relation in the weakly viscoelastic limit up to $O(De^2)$ . Furthermore, we exploit the reciprocal theorem derived by Boyko $$\&$$ Stone ( Phys. Rev. Fluids , vol. 6, 2021, L081301) to obtain the $$q$$ – $$\Delta p$$ relation at the next order, $O(De^3)$ , using only the velocity and stress fields at the previous orders. We validate our analytical results with two-dimensional numerical simulations in the case of a hyperbolic, symmetric contracting channel and find excellent agreement. While the velocity remains approximately Newtonian in the weakly viscoelastic limit (i.e. the theorem of Tanner and Pipkin), we reveal that the pressure drop strongly depends on the viscoelastic effects and decreases with $De$ . We elucidate the relative importance of different terms in the momentum equation contributing to the pressure drop along the symmetry line and identify that a pressure drop reduction for narrow contracting geometries is primarily due to gradients in the viscoelastic shear stresses. We further show that, although for narrow geometries the viscoelastic axial stresses are negligible along the symmetry line, they are comparable or larger than shear stresses in the rest of the domain.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2011750
- PAR ID:
- 10324983
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics
- Volume:
- 936
- ISSN:
- 0022-1120
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.67
