The propagation of vorticity in a viscoelastic fluid (Q1069357)

A layer of constant vorticity exists in an infinite space of incompressible isotropic viscoelastic fluid for which the shear stress for rectilinear shearing flows depends linearly on the history of the velocity gradient. At some instant of time the forces maintaining this flow are removed. The subsequent time-dependent vorticity field is calculated explicitly in the particular cases when the fluid is Newtonian and when it is Maxwellian. The limiting case in which the vorticity layer becomes a vortex sheet is also calculated.