Effect of realistic polymer rheology on elastic turbulence

In this project, the student will perform simulations of the Stokes flow of a viscoelastic fluid, using constitutive models that account for effects like conformation dependent drag and non-affine deformation. The resulting elastic turbulent flow will be analyzed and compared with that in the absence of such effects. The aim is to understand how the small-scale rheology of the polymer solution affects the large-scale flow dynamics. The project will involve understanding non-Newtonian fluid dynamics, chaotic flows, computational fluid dynamics. It is am ambitious project, so the first goal for this semester will be to modify the code to include the new physical effects and to get some initial results.