<p>Shear banding has been one of the hot issues in polymer science research and hydrogel applications. The universality of transient shear banding has been studied by rheometric characterization and computational simulation of high molecular weight polyacrylamide binary and ternary solutions. The rheological results show that the slope of the steady-state shear stress of the polymer solution in the medium shear rate range decreases with the increase of concentration for both binary and ternary polyacrylamide solutions, while the steady-state shear stress of 500<i>c*</i> polyacrylamide aqueous solution is basically independent of the shear rate, which is a general feature of the existence of the shear banding. Taking the results of the steady-state flow experiment of 500<i>c*</i> as a reference, the simple shear flow simulation study was calculated, and the calculation results found that when the steady-state shear stress is weakly dependent on the shear rate, the velocity field distribution within this shear rate range shows that a transient shear banding is generated, and the existence of the transient shear banding depends on the number of <i>Wi</i> applied. The larger the number of <i>Wi</i>, the longer the transient shear banding will exist.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>