Vivien W. S. Chu | Searcharxiv

arXiv2011

Polymer Effects on Heat Transport in Laminar Boundary Layer Flow

We consider a laminar Blasius boundary-layer flow above a slightly heated horizontal plate and study the effect of polymer additives on the heat transport. We show that the action of the polymers can be understood as a space-dependent effective viscosity that first increases from the zero-shear value then decreases exponentially back to the zero-shear value as one moves away from the boundary. We find that with such an effective viscosity, both the horizontal and vertical velocities near the plate are decreased thus leading to an increase in the friction drag and a decrease in the heat transport in the flow.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2011

Heat transport by laminar boundary layer flow with polymers

Motivated by recent experimental observations, we consider a steady-state Prandtl-Blasius boundary layer flow with polymers above a slightly heated horizontal plate and study how the heat transport might be affected by the polymers. We discuss how a set of equations can be derived for the problem and how these equations can be solved numerically by an iterative scheme. By carrying out such a scheme, we find that the effect of the polymers is equivalent to producing a space-dependent effective viscosity that first increases from the zero-shear value at the plate then decreases rapidly back to the zero-shear value far from the plate. We further show that such an effective viscosity leads to an enhancement in the drag, which in turn leads to a reduction in heat transport.

nlin.CD↗