High-resolution finite element simulation of 4:1 planar contraction flow of viscoelastic fluid

Abstract

In this work, we present high-resolution solutions for viscoelastic 4:1 planar contraction flow problems using a transient finite element method based on the fractional step method (FSM) and stabilization techniques (DEVSS-G/DG) with linear equal-order interpolation function. The Oldroyd-B model was used as the constitutive equation. A parallel multi-frontal algorithm was implemented to enhance computational speed and all solutions were obtained on a parallel machine. The vortex intensity and the re-attachment length of corner vortex show good mesh-convergent behavior and are compared with previous results from the literature. In particular, the present results are in good agreement with the predictions of the high-resolution finite volume method of Alves et al. [15]. This may be the first case that quantitative agreement is obtained between studies using different numerical methods for the benchmark problem of 4:1 planar contraction flow. As there has been little quantitative a