Paper Number
PO79 

Session
Poster Session

Title
Unification of two disparate branches of continuum mechanics: Polymeric stress and Lagrangian stretching

Presentation Date and Time
October 12, 2022 (Wednesday) 6:30

Track / Room
Poster Session / Riverwalk A

Authors (Click on name to view author profile)

1. Kumar, Manish (Purdue University, School of Mechanical Engineering)
2. Ardekani, Arezoo (Purdue University, School of Mechanical Engineering)

Author and Affiliation Lines (in printed abstract book)
Manish Kumar and Arezoo Ardekani
School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906

Speaker / Presenter 
Kumar, Manish

Keywords
theoretical methods; computational methods; flow-induced instabilities; polymer solutions

Text of Abstract
The stretching of polymeric chains in viscoelastic flows creates large polymeric stress, which controls the flow dynamics and transport. Viscoelastic flows are common in many geophysical, biological, and industrial applications ranging from biofilm transport to enhanced oil recovery. The knowledge of the polymeric stress field is essential to understand transport in these flows. However, the measurement of the polymeric stress field is highly challenging. Analytically, we have established a relationship between the Eulerian polymeric stress field and the Lagrangian stretching field for weak flows and also extended it for special flows having strong kinematics. Further, the numerical simulations show a strong correlation between the topologies of stress and stretching fields for complex geometries and chaotic flows. The Lagrangian stretching field depends solely on the flow kinematics, which is relatively easy to measure in the experiment. Thus, this result unifies two disparate branches of continuum mechanics and establishes a simple framework to unveil the topology of the polymeric stress field directly from readily measurable flow field data, even for strongly viscoelastic and unstable flows.