Modelling of Shear Banding in Plane Couette Flow of Non-linear Viscoelastic Fluids

Abstract

We investigate shear banding phenomena in the plane Couette flow of viscoelastic fluids.The viscoelastic fluids are modelled via
the Giesekus constitutive equations with stress diffusion. The nonlinear and coupled systems of equations, comprising the momentum equation and the constitutive equations, are solved numerically using semi-implicit finite difference methods. The
effects of the fluid parameters on the flow variables are also investigated. Under certain values of the material parameters, we observe formation of shear bands in plane Couette flow.