A numerical method for steady and nonisothermal viscoelastic fluid flow for high Deborah and Peclet numbers

A combined finite element/streamline integration method is presented for nonisothermal flows of viscoelastic fluids. The attention is focused on some characteristic problems that arise for numerical simulation of flows with high Deborah and Peclet numbers. The two most important problems to handle are the choice of an outflow boundary condition for not completely developed flow and the treatment of the dissipative term in the temperature equation. The ability of the numerical method to handle high Deborah and Peclet numbers will be demonstrated on a contraction now of an LDPE melt with isotropic and anisotropic heat conductivity. The influence of anisotropic heat conduction and the difference between the stress work and mechanical dissipation will be discussed for contraction flows.