Gravity-driven flow of a viscoelastic liquid film along a vertical wall

The hydrodynamics of steady laminar film flow of a viscoelastic fluid down a vertical wall is considered. The rheological model used exhib its normal-stress differences even in simple shear flows. The momentu m integral approach is adopted to obtain the variation of the film th ickness with distance in the flow direction. The resulting analytical expression for the film thickness reveals that viscoelastic films de velop more rapidly than Newtonian liquid films towards the downstream asymptotic state.