20

th
European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering ESCAPE20
S. Pierucci and G. Buzzi Ferraris (Editors)
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Simulation of Free Surface Viscoelastic Fluid Flow
Using the viscoelasticInterFoam Solver
Jovani L. Favero,
a
Nilo S. M. Cardozo,
a
Argimiro R. Secchi,
b
Hrvoje Jasak
c

a
Chemical Engineering Depart. EE/UFRGS - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do
Sul, R. Eng. Luiz Englert, s/n Centro 90040-140 Porto Alegre, RS Brazil,
favero@enq.ufrgs.br, nilo@enq.ufrgs.br
b
Chemical Engineering Program PEQ/COPPE Universidade Federal do Rio de
Janeiro, Av. Horcio Macedo, 2030 CT - G116 Ilha do Fundo 21941-972 Rio
de Janeiro, RJ Brazil, arge@peq.coppe.ufrj.br
c
FSB/Wikki Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of
Zagreb, Croatia, and Wikki Ltd., London W8 7PU, United Kingdom,
h.jasak@wikki.co.uk
Abstract
The understanding of polymeric fluids flows is of essential importance for several
industry sectors, including plastic and food processing industries. The rheological
response of viscoelastic fluids is quite complex, including combination of viscous and
elastic effects and highly non-linear viscous and elastic phenomena. In a previous work
we presented a solver for internal viscoelastic fluid flows, called viscoelasticFluidFoam,
which was developed with the OpenFOAM computational fluid dynamics package and
validated with experimental and numerical data from the literature for the analysis of a
planar 4:1 contraction flow. In the present work will be tested the extension of the
viscoelasticFluidFoam solver to the viscoelasticInterFoam solver used for analysis of
free surface viscoelastic fluid flows using the VOF methodology. A classical die swell
flow phenomena used in the rheology literature to present the concept of viscoelastic
effects was simulated. The results obtained using Giesekus model showed the great
potential of the developed formulation, once all phenomena observed experimentally
were reproduced in the simulations.

Keywords: Viscoelastic Fluids, VOF, OpenFOAM, Die Swell, CFD.
1. Introduction
The understanding of viscoelastic fluid flow characteristics is of great interest for
polymer and food processing industries. Unlike the Newtonian flow that is well
understood, the flow of viscoelastic fluids is still a subject of great discussion. Most of
the works on viscoelastic fluids found in literature treats internal flows using the
geometry known as abrupt planar contraction. This is due mainly because this geometry
was adopted as standard for viscoelastic fluids flow studies in 1987 during the fifth
international workshop on numeric methods for non-Newtonians fluids (Hassager,
1988). On the other hand, simulations using free surface viscoelastic flow are receiving
a special attention mainly in the last two decades (Tom et al., 2008).
Flows considering free surface is particularly useful for industry that works with
polymeric fluids, once processes as extrusion and injection molding of plastics, metallic
leagues or fluids used in food industry depend always more on the knowledge of
parameters that guarantee a high quality for their products (Khismatullin et al., 2006).
Favero et al.
Regarding the modeling, the study of free surface flow presents the same bases of
internal flows plus an appropriate methodology for treatment of free surface motion,
such as the MAC (Marker-and-Cell) (Harlow and Welch, 1965) and VOF (Volume-of-
Fluid) (Hirt and Nicols, 1981). An overview of literature works about viscoelastic free
surface simulation can be found in Harvie et al. (2008). There are in the literature
several works treating viscoelastic fluid flow with free surface, and the most of them
use finite element method to solve simplified cases. In this work we overcome that
limitation by showing results of a generic and flexible tool developed for treatment of
free surface viscoelastic fluid flow using finite volume method and VOF methodology.
This tool can be used to simulate complex geometries encountered in real problems of
polymer and food processing industries, using non-structured and moving meshes, and
allowing to choose among several different interpolation schemes, solvers for linear
algebra, possibility of data processing parallelization and several constitutive equations
for treatment of viscoelasticity.
This work is an extension of our previous development of a solver, called
viscoelasticFluidFoam (Favero et al., 2009), for treatment of internal viscoelastic flow
using the OpenFOAM software (Weller et al., 1998). Such extension consists of
increasing the capability of the viscoelasticFluidFoam solver, already available to the
user in OpenFOAM, for the treatment of free surfaces flow using the VOF
methodology, creating a new solver called viscoelasticInterFoam. The discretization of
the flow governing equations in OpenFOAM is based on the finite volume method
formulated with collocated variable arrangement, with pressure and velocity solved by
segregated methods. The software offers a wide range of interpolation schemes, solvers
and preconditioners for the discretized algebraic equation system.
The results, studying a classic experiment in viscoelastic fluids flow with free surface:
the die swell in the exit of a channel, show the success of the applied methodology. The
rod-climbing experiment was also reproduced in the simulations but is not shown here
due to lack of space.
2. Methodology
In this section, the mathematical formulation, the strategy used to solve free surface
viscoelastic fluid flow, and a description of the test problems are presented.
2.1. Mathematical Formulation
The governing equations of laminar, incompressible, and isothermal flow of viscoelastic
fluids are the mass conservation (continuity equation):
0 V = u (1)
and momentum conservation:
( )
( ) p g
S P
t
c
+V = V + V +V +
c
u
uu

(2)
together with a mechanical constitutive equation that describes the relation between the
stress and the deformation rate for a given fluid. In the above equations is the density,
u the velocity vector, p the pressure,
S
the solvent Newtonian contribution, and
P
the
polymeric contribution.
The solvent contribution is given by:
2
S S
= D q (3)
Simulation of Free Surface Viscoelastic Fluid Flow Using the Software OpenFOAM
where
S
is the solvent viscosity and D is the deformation rate tensor, given by:
| |
( )
1
2
T
= V + V D u u (4)
The extra elastic contribution, corresponding to the polymeric part, is obtained from the
solution of an appropriate constitutive differential equation. Various constitutive
equations are found in literature, as for example, Maxwell, Oldroyd-B, Phan-Thien-
Tanner (PTT), Finitely Extensible Nonlinear Elastic and so on. A well known and
widely used is the Giesekus constitutive model described as (Giesekus, 1982):
( ) 2
P P P P p
p
V
+ + = D

o q
q
(5)
where and
P
are the relaxation time and the polymer viscosity at zero shear rate,
respectively, is the dimensionless mobility factor, and
P
V
is the upper convected
derivative of the elastic stress tensor defined as (Bird et al., 1987):
| | ( )
P
T
P P P P
t
V
c
(
= + V V V

c
u u u (6)
Another important subject is the treatment of the free surface. In the developed solver it
was used the VOF methodology (Hirt and Nicols, 1981). In this method, the volume of
fluid in a cell is computed as F
vol
= V
cell
where V
cell
is the computational cell volume
and is the liquid fraction in this cell. The value of in a cell varies between 0 and 1. A
cell totally filled with one fluid presents = 1 and another totally filled with one
different fluid have = 0. In the interface the value of is an intermediate value
between 0 and 1, satisfying the following equation:
( ) ( ) (1 ) 0
r
t
c
+V +V =
c
u u

(7)
where u
r
is the velocity field subject to interface compression (Ubbink and Issa, 1999;
Rusche, 2003). The last artificial term is only activated in the region of the interface due
to the properties of the term (1-).
The VOF methodology allows to solve the flow of two different fluids (two-phase flow)
solving as for one fluid only, in other words, the same equations are solved for both
fluids, the only difference is regarding to the physical properties. To make this possible,
the physical properties in any control volume of the domain are given by the
corresponding fraction of the fluid in that volume. It is mathematically obtained,
considering a generic property , as:
1 2
(1 )
fluid fluid
= + u u u (8)
2.2. Test Geometry
To test the implemented methodology, the reproduction of a classic example used to
demonstrate viscoelasticity effects are carried out. The test consists in reproducing the
die swell phenomena.
Figure 1 shows the effect of die swell due to the fluid elasticity (Bird et al., 1987). An
effect due to viscoelasticity is the presence of normal stress differences in shear flow. In
addition to shear stress, viscoelastic fluids present an extra stress due to stretching and
Favero et al.
alignment of polymeric chains. In this experiment, it is considered a fluid flowing out of
a capillary with diameter d. For Newtonian fluids the swell can vary 13% above or
below of the diameter d, whereas for polymeric fluids, an increase in more than 300%
relative to d can be found, depending on the fluid elasticity. To simulate this experiment
a shear rate of 60 s
-1
was used in the flowing channel.

(a) (b)
Figure 1: (a) Representation of the die swell effect for a Newtonian fluid (left) and a polymeric
fluid (right) (Source: Bird et al., 1987). (b) 2D geometry used to simulate the experiment.
In Table 1, the physical properties of the fluids used in the simulations are listed. In the
analyzed case, a Newtonian and two polymeric fluids are considered flowing to an
atmosphere containing air. The gravitational acceleration used was -9.8 m/s
2
in Y
direction. To the Newtonian fluid was used the viscosity value equal to the sum of the
polymer and solvent viscosities (
P
+
S
). The difference between the two polymeric
fluids analyzed is only on the value of parameter. The value of is responsible to the
deviation of the Newtonian like fluids and then an increase of this value results in an
increase of the elasticity phenomena for the same flow conditions. To Newtonians like
fluids the value of is assumed as being null.
Table 1: Physical properties of fluids in simulations.
Fluid Parameters Die Swell
[kg/m
3
] 803.87

S
[Pa.s] 0.002
Polymer
P
[Pa.s] 1.20
[s] 0.03 and 3.0
[--] 0.15
[kg/m
3
] 1.0

S
[Pa.s] 0.0
Air
P
[Pa.s] 1.48x10
-5

[s] 0.0
[--] 0.0
3. Results and Discussion
Analyzing Figure 2, we can observe three main differences comparing Newtonian and
viscoelastic behavior:
1) The occurrence of jet ruptures for the viscoelastic case with high value. This could
be attributed to the fluid accumulation at the nozzle due to elastic behavior. When there
is enough accumulation of polymer a sudden acceleration going down is observed,
causing a local increase of elongation rate and producing, in this way, the rupture. When
jet break, recoil of fluid is also observed due to elasticity.
Simulation of Free Surface Viscoelastic Fluid Flow Using the Software OpenFOAM

Newtonian Polymer ( = 0.03 s) Polymer ( = 3.0 s)

time = 0.5 s

time = 1.0 s

time = 1.5 s

time = 2.0 s

time = 2.5 s

time = 3.5 s
Figure 2: Results for die swell simulation.
2) The viscoelastic fluid presents a jet that oscillates in the X direction, and due to this
effect air bubbles are occluded in the mass of fluid.
3) The die swell only happens for the polymeric fluid and it is also noticed that the die
swell happens mainly next to the exit of the channel, where exists the relaxation of the
polymeric chains.
Favero et al.
In Figure 3, a zoom on the exit of the channel region is shown for a better visualization
of the die swell, together with the respective stress field for the time instant 3.5 s. The
larger values of stress happen inside the channel and soon at the channel exit, where the
die swell exists.
Newtonian Polymer ( = 0.03 s) Stress field

Figure 3: Die swell and stress field at time = 3.5 s.
For all the presented simulations the Crank-Nicholson method was used for time
derivatives, with zero initial condition being specified for all variables unless the field
where the value of 1.0 was specified on the channel. The resulting linear discretized
systems were solved by conjugated gradient method (CG), using CG with AMG
preconditioning for pressure and BiCGstab with an Incomplete Lower-Upper (ILU)
preconditioning for , velocity and stress. The absolute tolerance for pressure was
1.010
7
and for , velocity, and stress was 1.010
6
.
4. Conclusion
Simulation results of viscoelastic fluid flow with free surface were presented. The
analyzed cases show results with qualitative agreement with experimentally observed.
Die swell was observed in the polymer jet at the channel exit, and jet rupture and air
bubbles occlusion in the fluid were verified. The obtained results were satisfactory,
justifying the usage of the methodology for free-surface viscoelastic fluid flow using the
software OpenFOAM.
5. Acknowledgements
We want to thanks CAPES for the financial support.
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