Application of full flow field reconstruction to a viscoelastic liquid in a 2D cross-slot channel

► 2D complex flow kinematics of a polymer melt is measured in a cross-slot channel. ► Velocity field is analyzed by Tikhonov regularization combined with finite elements. ► Regularizing departure of the velocity from its Newtonian counterpart minimizes bias. ► The method is suited to reveal smooth gradient fields from noisy or scattered data. ► Smooth stress fields are thus attainable to test constitutive models.