Hydromagnetic Flow over an Inclined Non-Linear Stretching Sheet with Variable Viscosity in the Presence of Thermal Radiation and Chemical Reaction

Abstract

An analysis has been made to investigate the effects of thermal radiation on the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow and heat transfer over an inclined non-linear stretching sheet. The surface velocity of the stretching sheet and the transverse magnetic field are assumed to vary as a power function of the distance from the origin. The effect of internal heat generation/absorption is taken into account. The fluid viscosity is assumed to vary as an inverse linear function of temperature. A generalized similarity transformation is used to reduce the governing partial differential equations to a system of non-linear coupled ordinary differential equations, and is solved numerically by using a finite difference scheme. The numerical results concerned with the velocity, temperature and concentration distributions as well as the skin-friction coefficient and the Nusselt number for various values of the dimensionless parameters of interest are obtained. Some important findings reported in this paper reveal that the effect of thermal radiation and heat generation/absorption have significant role in controlling the rate of heat transfer in the boundary layer region.

Keywords

• Thermal radiation
• Chemical reaction
• Variable viscosity
• Inclined sheet.