Viscoelastic stresses in the stagnation flow of a dilute polymer solution

In this paper, we consider viscoelastic stresses T11, T12 and T22 arising in the stagnation flow of a dilute polymer solution; in particular, we consider an upper convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid. We present exact solutions to the coupled partial differential equations describing the viscoelastic stresses and deduce the results for the stress T22 of Becherer et al. [P. Becherer, A.N. Morozov, W. van Saarloos, Scaling of singular structures in extensional flow of dilute polymer solutions, J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 153 (2008) 183–190]. As we considered the viscoelastic stresses over two spatial variables, we are able to study the effect of variable boundary data at the inflow. As such, our results are applicable to a wider range of fluid flow problems.