Numerical approximation of corotational dumbbell models for dilute polymers
We construct a general family of Galerkin methods for the numerical approximation of weak solutions to a bead-spring model that arises from the kinetic theory of dilute solutions of polymeric liquids with noninteracting polymer chains. The model consists of the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2009
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| Summary: | We construct a general family of Galerkin methods for the numerical approximation of weak solutions to a bead-spring model that arises from the kinetic theory of dilute solutions of polymeric liquids with noninteracting polymer chains. The model consists of the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, for the velocity and the pressure of the fluid, with an elastic extra-stress tensor as right-hand side in the momentum equation. The extra-stress tensor stems from the random movement of the polymer chains and is defined through the associated probability density function satisfying a Fokker-Planck-type parabolic equation. We focus on finitely extensible nonlinear elastic-type dumbbell models. In the case of a corotational drag term, we perform a rigorous passage to the limit as the spatial and temporal discretization parameters tend to zero and show that a (sub)sequence of numerical solutions converges to a weak solution of this coupled Navier-Stokes-Fokker-Planck system. |
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