Effects of thermal buoyancy and variable thermal conductivity on the MHD flow and heat transfer in a power-law fluid past a vertical stretching sheet in the presence of a non-uniform heat source

Abstract

The paper considers the flow of a power-law fluid past a vertical stretching sheet. Effects of variable thermal conductivity and non-uniform heat source/sink on the heat transfer are addressed. The thermal conductivity is assumed to vary linearly with temperature. Similarity transformation is used to convert the governing partial differential equations into a set of coupled, non-linear ordinary differential equations. Two different types of boundary heating are considered, namely Prescribed power-law Surface Temperature (PST) and Prescribed power-law Heat Flux (PHF). Shooting method is used to obtain the numerical solution for the resulting boundary value problems. The effects of Chandrasekhar number, Grashof number, Prandtl number, non-uniform heat source/sink parameters, wall temperature parameter and variable thermal conductivity parameter on the dynamics are shown graphically in several plots. The skin friction and heat transfer coefficients are tabulated for a range of values of the parameters. Present study reveals that in a gravity affected flow buoyancy effect has a significant say in the control of flow and heat transfer. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.