• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.27-40
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• 2012

The two-dimensional incompressible flow of a linear viscoelastic fluid we considered in this research has rapidly oscillating initial conditions which contain both the large scale and small scale information. In order to grasp this double-scale phenomenon of the complex flow, a multiscale analysis method is developed based on the mathematical homogenization theory. For the incompressible flow of a linear viscoelastic Maxwell fluid, a well-posed multiscale system, including averaged equations and cell problems, is derived by employing the appropriate multiple scale asymptotic expansions to approximate the velocity, pressure and stress fields. And then, this multiscale system is solved numerically using the pseudospectral algorithm based on a time-splitting semi-implicit influence matrix method. The comparisons between the multiscale solutions and the direct numerical simulations demonstrate that the multiscale model not only captures large scale features accurately, but also reflects kinetic interactions between the large and small scale of the incompressible flow of a linear viscoelastic fluid.