2000/05/26 by K. Arun Kumar, Michael D. Graham
Chemical Engineering · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Fluid Dynamics and Thin Films #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.85.4056
5 pages text and 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2000/05/26 · openalex publication_date 2000/11/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Starting from stationary bifurcations in Couette-Dean flow, we compute nontrivial stationary solutions in inertialess viscoelastic circular Couette flow. These solutions are strongly localized vortex pairs, exist at arbitrarily large wavelengths, and show hysteresis in the Weissenberg number, similar to experimentally observed "diwhirl" patterns. Based on the computed velocity and stress fields, we elucidate a heuristic, fully nonlinear mechanism for these flows. We propose that these localized, fully nonlinear structures comprise fundamental building blocks for complex spatiotemporal dynamics in the flow of elastic liquids.