Two-fluid kinetic theory for dilute polymer solutions.

Abstract

We provide a Boltzmann-type kinetic description for dilute polymer solutions based on two-fluid theory. This Boltzmann-type description uses a quasiequilibrium based relaxation mechanism to model collisions between a polymer dumbbell and a solvent molecule. The model reproduces the desired macroscopic equations for the polymer-solvent mixture. The proposed kinetic scheme leads to a numerical algorithm which is along the lines of the lattice Boltzmann method. Finally, the algorithm is applied to describe the evolution of a perturbed Kolmogorov flow profile, whereby we recover the major elastic effect exhibited by a polymer solution, specifically, the suppression of the original inertial instability.