Effect of Solvent Contribution on Thermally Developing Flow of FENE-P Fluids between Parallel Plates

Numerical computation of thermally developing laminar flow of viscoelastic FENE-P fluids flowing between two stationary parallel plates is investigated using the finite element technique. The influence of the effect of the solvent contribution as well as the fluid rheology on the flow field and heat transfer enhancement is investigated for the case of imposed constant wall heat flux and neglected viscous dissipation. Numerical results for flow field are compared first against available analytical solutions with and without inclusion of the solvent contribution. The obtained results for the viscoelastic case show that increasing Weissenberg number (We) leads to an increase in Nusselt number (Nu) while high values of the extensibility parameter (L^2) decrease the Nusselt number. Fully developed Nusselt number values for FENE-P fluids flowing between two fixed parallel plates are obtained for several values of polymer concentration and the study confirms quantitatively that polymer concentration enhances heat transfer rates in FENE-P fluids.