Squeeze flow of a piezoviscous fluid

- We investigate squeeze flow of piezoviscous fluids.
- Presence of contact line leads to strong pressure variations.
- Strong pressure variations induce strong viscosity variations in piezoviscous fluid.
- Squeeze flow characteristics are influenced by piezoviscosity of the fluid.

We investigate the squeeze flow of a piezoviscous fluid. The classical Navier-Stokes fluid model and the no-slip boundary condition on the plate-fluid interface implies the presence of the pressure singularity at the contact line. It can be conjectured that the same behaviour is present even for piezoviscous fluids. Consequently the pressure variation in the fluid could be large, and the pressure dependent viscosity could be important even if the piezoviscous coefficient is apparently small. We investigate this conjecture by means of numerical simulation based on a variant of the spectral collocation method. The numerical simulations indicate that the effects due to pressure dependent viscosity are for certain range of parameter values significant.