Viscosity, first normal-stress coefficient, and molecular stretching in dilute polymer solutions (Q1083301)

Warner's numerical method for finitely extensible nonlinear elastic dumbbells (FENE) in a dilute suspension undergoing steady-state shear flow has been improved by assuming a form of the distribution function that removes the singularity at \(R=0\) and improves the behavior of the weight function in the Galerkin expression for large b. The material functions, the dumbbell elongation, and the distribution function for steady-state shear flow are given. In addition the newly obtained results are used to assess the accuracy of two approximate methods referred to as the FENE-P model and the FENE-P-B model.