Onset of Thermal Instabilities in the Plane Poiseuille Flow of Weakly Elastic Fluids: Viscous Dissipation Effects

The onset of thermal instabilities in the plane Poiseuille flow of weakly elastic fluids is examined through a linear stability analysis by taking into account the effects of viscous dissipation. The destabilizing thermal gradients may come from the different temperatures imposed on the external boundaries and/or from the volumetric heating induced by viscous dissipation. The rheological properties of the viscoelastic fluid are modeled using the Oldroyd-B constitutive equation. As in the Newtonian fluid case, the most unstable structures are found to be stationary longitudinal rolls (modes with axes aligned along the streamwise direction). For such structures, it is shown that the viscoelastic contribution to viscous dissipation may be reduced to one unique parameter: γ=λ1(1−Γ), where λ1 and Γ represent the relaxation time and the viscosity ratio of the viscoelastic fluid, respectively. It is found that the influence of the elasticity parameter γ on the linear stability characteristics is non-monotonic. The fluid elasticity stabilizes (destabilizes) the basic Poiseuille flow if γ<γ* (γ>γ*) where γ* is a particular value of γ that we have determined. It is also shown that when the temperature gradient imposed on the external boundaries is zero, the critical Reynolds number for the onset of such viscous dissipation/viscoelastic-induced instability may be well below the one needed to trigger the pure hydrodynamic instability in weakly elastic solutions.