Mixed Convective Flow of Unsteady Hydromagnetic Couple Stress Fluid Through a Vertical Channel Filled with Porous Medium

Abstract

In this paper, the mixed convective flow of an electrically conducting, viscous incompressible couple stress fluid through a vertical channel filled with a saturated porous medium has been investigated. The fluid is assumed to be driven by both buoyancy force and oscillatory pressure gradient parallel to the channel plates. A uniform magnetic field of strength B0 is imposed transverse to the channel boundaries. The temperature of the right channel plate is assumed to vary periodically, and the temperature difference between the plates is high enough to induce radiative heat transfer. Under these assumptions, the equations governing the two-dimensional couple stress fluid flow are formulated and exact solutions of the velocity and the temperature fields are obtained. The effects of radiation, Hall current, porous medium permeability and other various flow parameters on the flow and heat transfer are presented graphically and discussed extensively.

Keywords

• couple stress fluid
• mixed convection
• magnetohydrodynamics
• oscillatory flow