GRAVITY-DRIVEN MOTION OF A LAYER OF VISCOELASTIC FLUID AROUND A HORIZONTAL WIRE

A theoretical study of the free-surface flow of a viscoelastic fluid around a horizontal cylinder is reported in this paper. The fluid layer has initially a uniform thickness, and, at some instant of time, it starts to flow due to the presence of a gravity field. The result sought is the film thickness as a function of time and angular position. The mass- and momentum-conservation principles are employed in conjunction with the Maxwell constitutive equation. Using an integral method, a system of two nonlinear equations is obtained. The results are compared with the ones for a Newtonian fluid, and the elastic effects are shown to change dramatically the flow.