 Phan-Thien-Tanner fluid

The affine linear PTT fluid considered here uses a symmetric dimensionless tensor $A$ with $\stackrel{\nabla }{A}+(1+\alpha \mathrm{tr}A)A/\tau =2E$ and polymer stress $G_{0}A$. Here $\stackrel{\nabla }{A}$ is the upper-convected derivative, $G_0,\tau >0$ and the nonlinear relaxation parameter $\alpha$ is usually positive. Linearizing about rest gives the Maxwell fluid relaxation modulus $G(s)=G_0{e}^{-s/\tau }$. The PTT family also admits other relaxation functions and nonaffine derivatives; their nonlinear predictions need not equal those of this specified version.