Unsteady flow and heat transfer of a fluid-particle suspension over an exponentially stretching sheet

Abstract

A numerical analysis is performed to investigate the structure of an unsteady boundary layer flow and heat transfer of a dusty fluid over an exponentially stretching sheet subject to suction. Thermal radiation, viscous dissipation and internal heat generation/absorption effects are considered in the energy equation. In order to arrive at nonlinear ordinary differential equations, similarity transformations are defined differently compared to the steady case and these nonlinear differential equations along with pertinent boundary condition are solved numerically by Runge–Kutta–Fehlberg 45 method. The heat transfer analysis is carried out for two thermal processes, namely (i) variable exponential order surface temperature (VEST) and (ii) variable exponential order heat flux (VEHF). Comparison with known results for certain particular cases is excellent. Finally the effects of the pertinent parameters which are of physical and engineering interest are presented in graphical and tabular form.

Keywords

• Unsteady flow
• Fluid-particle suspension
• MHD flow
• Heat transfer
• Exponentially stretching sheet