Design of a combined polarimetric and velocimetric measurement for viscoelastic stress, and its constitutive resolving power

Abstract

A polarimeter does not report stress. It reports a retardance and an azimuth, and converting those to a stress pair fixes both the calibration that is required and the covariance that the subsequent inference must carry. We set out that observation chain for planar viscoelastic flow, combine it with velocimetry, and ask what the combined measurement can resolve. The calibration constant is fixed by three separately measurable quantities (path length, stress-optic coefficient and wavelength) rather than being fitted. Propagating the polarimetric errors to first order gives a stress covariance that is anisotropic and site dependent even for independent homoscedastic inputs, and whose conditioning degrades as the retardance approaches zero, where the linearization itself stops describing the measurement. Wrapping imposes a separate design bound. Two numerical studies follow, both in ideal calibrated stress coordinates under a prescribed covariance rather than the propagated polarimetric one. Holding the total scalar count fixed and varying the split between velocimetric and optical sites, an unequal allocation favoring optical sites outperforms either pure configuration. We then ask what the measurement resolves between constitutive models compatible with the same velocity data. In self-consistent pressure-driven flow of the finitely extensible nonlinear elastic Peterlin model, at extensibility L^2=50 and 3% noise, the optical channel rejects the velocity-compatible Oldroyd-B family in 78.1% of realizations at the Deborah number De=2, the ratio of the relaxation time to the flow timescale, and in 100% at De=4, while rejecting only about 5% below De=0.3. The resolving power of a design is therefore a strong function of Deborah number and must be quoted with it.