  This paper is focused on the fundamental mechanism(s) of viscoelastic
turbulence that lead to polymer induced turbulent drag reduction phenomenon. A
great challenge in this problem is the computation of viscoelastic turbulent
flows, since the understanding of polymer physics is restricted to mechanical
models. An effective state-of-the-art numerical method to solve the governing
equation for polymers modelled as non-linear springs, without using any
artificial assumptions as usual, was implemented here for the first time on a
three-dimensional channel flow geometry. The capability of this algorithm to
capture the strong polymer-turbulence dynamical interactions is depicted on the
results, which are much closer qualitatively to experimental observations. This
allowed a more detailed study of the polymer-turbulence interactions, which
yields an enhanced picture on a mechanism resulting from the polymer-turbulence
energy transfers.
