Elasto visco‐plastic flow with special attention to boundary conditions

In this paper we analyse a simple but non‐trivial steady‐state creeping elasto visco‐plastic (Maxwell fluid) radial flow problem, paying particular attention to the effects of the boundary conditions. Solutions are obtained by integration of a governing equation on stress, using the Runge‐Kutta method for initial value problems and finite differences for boundary value problems. A more general approach by the finite element method, which solves for the velocity field rather than the stress field, and which is applicable to a wide range of problems, is presented and tested using the radial flow example.