Efficient computation of the spectrum of viscoelastic flows

The understanding of viscoelastic flows in many situations requires not only the steady state solution of the governing equations, but also its sensitivity to small perturbations. Linear stability analysis leads to a generalized eigenvalue problem (GEVP), whose numerical analysis may be challenging, even for Newtonian liquids, because the incompressibility constraint creates singularities that lead to non-physical eigenvalues at infinity. For viscoelastic flows, the difficulties increase due to the presence of continuous spectrum, related to the constitutive equations.The Couette flow of upper convected Maxwell (UCM) liquids has been used as a case study of the stability of viscoelastic flows. The spectrum consists of two discrete eigenvalues and a continuous segment with real part equal to −1/We (We is the Weissenberg number). Most of the approximations in the literature were obtained using spectral expansions. The eigenvalues close to the continuous part of the spectrum show very slow convergence.In this work, the linear stability of Couette flow of a UCM liquid is studied using a finite element method. A new procedure to eliminate the eigenvalues at infinity from the GEVP is proposed. The procedure takes advantage of the structure of the matrices involved and avoids the computational overhead of the usual mapping techniques. The GEVP is transformed into a non-degenerate GEVP of dimension five times smaller. The computed eigenfunctions related to the continuous spectrum are in good agreement with the analytic solutions obtained by Graham [M.D. Graham, Effect of axial flow on viscoelastic Taylor–Couette instability, J. Fluid Mech. 360 (1998) 341].