Application of the natural stress formulation for solving unsteady viscoelastic contraction flows

We present a numerical scheme for a previously unexploited formulation of the equations for unsteady viscoelastic flow. The formulation aligns the polymer stress along particle paths/streamlines, utilising the characteristic curves associated with the hyperbolic part of the constitutive equations. We illustrate the approach for the Oldroyd-B model in the benchmark 4:1 contraction for moderate elasticity numbers. We show that the scheme is able to accurately capture the re-entrant corner singularity for the polymer stresses and the pressure, the latter variable being inaccurately determined by schemes using the traditional formulation in terms of Cartesian polymer stresses. A space-step restriction for stability is derived, which can be numerically limiting in certain recirculation regions. This contrasts with the equivalent space-step restriction for the formulation in Cartesian stresses, which is limiting in flow regions of high velocity gradients, for example, at sharp corners in contraction flows.