A note on the creeping motion of a viscoelastic fluid past a sphere

Abstract

In this paper we consider the creeping motion of a viscoelastic fluid past a sphere. Detailed visualization of the flow was carried out using small suspended tracer particles, forReynolds numbers Re, less than 0.1 andWeissenberg numbers, We, ranging from 10⁻² to 22. Although some upstream shifting of the streamlines was found for ReWe = O(1), comparison shows that the streamline shift is very much smaller than predicted by the theoretical analysis ofUltman andDenn (1971). This discrepancy has led us to re-examine the validity of the basic assumptions of the analysis, as reported in the last section of the present communication.

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