NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF DELAYED DIE SWELL

In a recent paper, Joseph et al. showed that, for a number of viscoelastic fluids, one can observe the phenomenon of delayed die swell beyond a critical extrusion velocity, or beyond a critical value of the viscoelastic Mach number. Giesekus had also observed that delayed die swell is a critical phenomenon. In the present paper, we find a set of material and flow parameters under which it is possible to simulate delayed die swell. For the viscoelastic flow calculation, we use the finite element algorithm with sub-elements for the stresses and streamline upwinding in the discretized constitutive equations. For the free surface, we use an implicit technique which allows us to implement Newton's method for solving the non-linear system of equations. The fluid is Oldroyd-B which, in the present problem, is a singular perturbation of the Maxwell fluid. The results show very little sensitivity to the size of the retardation time. We also show delayed die swell for a Giesekus fluid. © 1990 Steinkopff.