A Numerical Model of Viscoelastic Flow in Microchannels

Conference · Thu Nov 14 04:00:00 EST 2002

OSTI ID:15003340

Trebotich, D; Colella, P; Miller, G; Liepmann, D

The authors present a numerical method to model non-Newtonian, viscoelastic flow at the microscale. The equations of motion are the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the Oldroyd-B constitutive equation. This constitutive equation is chosen to model a Boger fluid which is representative of complex biological solutions exhibiting elastic behavior due to macromolecules in the solution (e.g., DNA solution). The numerical approach is a projection method to impose the incompressibility constraint and a Lax-Wendroff method to predict velocities and stresses while recovering both viscous and elastic limits. The method is second-order accurate in space and time, free-stream preserving, has a time step constraint determined by the advective CFL condition, and requires the solution of only well-behaved linear systems amenable to the use of fast iterative methods. They demonstrate the method for viscoelastic incompressible flow in simple microchannels (2D) and microducts (3D).

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 15003340
• Report Number(s): UCRL-JC-150969
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
DNA
EQUATIONS OF MOTION
INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW
ITERATIVE METHODS
NAVIER-STOKES EQUATIONS
STRESSES