Finite element approximation of steady flows of generalized Newtonian fluids with concentration-dependent power-law index

TL;DR

This paper develops and analyzes a finite element method for simulating steady flows of chemically reacting generalized Newtonian fluids with a concentration-dependent power-law index, ensuring convergence to weak solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a regularized finite element scheme for a complex fluid model with variable viscosity and proves its convergence to weak solutions of the original system.

Findings

Finite element approximation converges to a weak solution.

Regularized model's solutions converge to original model's solutions.

Mathematical analysis confirms the method's validity.

Abstract

We consider a system of nonlinear partial differential equations describing the motion of an incompressible chemically reacting generalized Newtonian fluid in three space dimensions. The governing system consists of a steady convection-diffusion equation for the concentration and a generalized steady power-law-type fluid flow model for the velocity and the pressure, where the viscosity depends on both the shear-rate and the concentration through a concentration-dependent power-law index. The aim of the paper is to perform a mathematical analysis of a finite element approximation of this model. We formulate a regularization of the model by introducing an additional term in the conservation-of-momentum equation and construct a finite element approximation of the regularized system. We show the convergence of the finite element method to a weak solution of the regularized model and prove that weak solutions of the regularized problem converge to a weak solution of the original problem.