International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 16, Pages 2677-2688
doi:10.1155/IJMMS.2005.2677

A note on the flow induced by a constantly accelerating edge in an Oldroyd-B fluid

C. Fetecau1 and Sharat C. Prasad2

1Department of Mathematics, University of Iasi, Iasi 6600, Romania
2Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A & M University, College Station 77843, TX, USA

Received 1 June 2005

Copyright © 2005 C. Fetecau and Sharat C. Prasad. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Analytical expressions for the velocity field and the tangential stresses that are induced due to a constantly accelerating edge in an Oldroyd-B fluid have been established for all values of material constants. The solutions that have been obtained satisfy the governing differential equations and all the imposed initial and boundary conditions. These solutions reduce to those for the Maxwell, second-grade, and Navier-Stokes fluid as limiting cases. Exact solutions such as those determined here for an unsteady problem serve a dual purpose. They have relevance to an interesting physical problem and the solutions can also be used to check the efficacy of the flows of such fluids in more complicated flow domains.