Computational Rheology

Predicting flows of non-Newtonian fluids is not just limited to the turbulent flow regime. In fact, a significant part of the work in this field concerns laminar flows, especially of viscoelastic fluids and this is called computational rheology. Our group has been developing finite volume methods for the prediction of viscoelastic fluids both on our own, as well as in collaboration with Prof. Paulo Oliveira at Universidade da Beira Interior, Dr. Miguel Nóbrega at Universidade do Minho — Institute of Polymers and Composites, Prof. Robert Poole at University of Liverpool, Prof. Mónica Oliveira at University of Strathclyde, Dr. Cássio Oishi at Universidade Estadual Paulista, Presidente Prudente SP and Dr. António Castelo at University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil.

Our current interests are on developing stable and highly accurate methods for computational rheology, the investigation of elastic instabilities, free surface flows, flows with wall slip, flows with electrokinetic phenomena and on various biofluids, such as blood flows. We are also interested in the study of multiphase flows of thermorheologically complex fluids in order to carry out the calculations required by the complex large-scale industrial applications such as macro and micro-injection moulding and optical glass moulding. One important contribution was the development of rheoTool, an open-source toolbox based on OpenFOAM® to simulate Generalized Newtonian Fluids (GNF) and viscoelastic fluids under pressure-driven and/or electrically-driven flows.