Transient behaviour and stability points of the Poiseuille flow of a KBKZ-fluid

The Poiseuille flow of a KBKZ-fluid, being a nonlinear viscoelastic model for a polymeric fluid, is studied. The flow starts from rest and especially the transient phase of the flow is considered. It is shown that under certain conditions the steady flow equation has three different equilibrium points. The stability of these points is investigated. It is proved that two points are stable, whereas the remaining one is unstable, leading to several peculiar phenomena such as discontinuities in the velocity gradient near the wall of the pipe (spurt) and hysteresis. Our theoretical results are confirmed by numerical calculationsof the velocity gradient.