Lagrangian evaluation of polymeric stress in viscoelastic fluids

Polymeric stresses in viscoelastic flows arise from the deformation of polymer chains and are commonly computed using Eulerian constitutive models, in which the conformation tensor is evolved as a transported field over the entire domain.

This approach is computationally intensive, prone to numerical instabilities, and not directly applicable to experimentally measured velocity fields.

In this work, we develop a Lagrangian integration scheme that reconstructs the polymeric stress field from the deformation-gradient history along fluid element trajectories in a known, steady velocity field.

This approach avoids solving the full Eulerian constitutive transport equation, which we develop for the nonlinear FENE-P model as well as the Oldroyd-B model as a reference case.

After validation on unidirectional, canonical flows, the scheme is applied to non-trivial channel flows past circular obstacles using velocity fields quantified from both numerical simulations and microfluidic experiments.

The reconstructed stress fields across both experiments and simulations are in agreement with traditional Eulerian reference solutions.

Not only does this new Lagrangian scheme enable the quantification of stress fields directly from experimental velocity field data, but it also enables partial or whole-field mapping of stresses without solving fully-coupled viscoelastic constitutive equations.