Swirling flow of couple stress fluid due to a rotating disk

Abstract

The main objective of the present investigation is to examine the couple stress fluid flow occurring as a result of rotation of a disk. On implementing a suitable transformation, the governing system of partial differential equations (PDEs) is converted into nonlinear differential equations of a single independent variable. These equations are solved analytically by virtue of the Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM) which gives solutions in the form of a series. The solution of most of the governing problems is determined in terms of the absolute exponential and decaying functions by means of this powerful technique. To support analytic results, some graphs are plotted for determining the convergence of the solution. Also the graphical interpretation of velocity profiles corresponding to the effects of pertinent parameters are shown and discussed in detail. The numerical results are calculated for evaluation of the influence of fluid parameter. It can also be anticipated that the radial and axial velocity components show decreasing behavior due to rise in the values of couple stress parameter which conflict the behavior of the tangential component of velocity.

Keywords

• disk rotation
• swirling flow
• couple stress fluid