Subcritical finite-amplitude solutions in plane Couette flow of visco-elastic fluids

Plane Couette flow of visco-elastic fluids is shown to exhibit a purely elastic subcritical instability in spite of being linearly stable. The mechanism of this instability is proposed and the nonlinear stability analysis of plane Couette flow of the Upper-Convected Maxwell fluid is presented. It is found that above the critical Weissenberg number, a small finite-size perturbation is sufficient to create a secondary flow, and the threshold value for the amplitude of the perturbation decreases as the Weissenberg number increases. The results suggest a scenario for weakly turbulent visco-elastic flow which is similar to the one for Newtonian fluids as a function of Reynolds number.