Convective heat and mass transfer in a visco-elastic fluid flow through a porous medium over a stretching sheet

Abstract

Presents a numerical solution of the two-dimensional laminar boundary layer problem on free and forced convection of an incompressible visco-elastic fluid immersed in a porous medium over a stretching sheet. Here, the driving force for the flaw is provided by an impermeable sheet stretched with a velocity proportional to the distance from a slit and buoyancy effects due to both temperature and concentration gradients. The resultant governing boundary layer equations are highly non-linear and coupled form of partial differential equations, and they have been solved by employing a numerical shooting technique with fourth order Runge-Kutta integration scheme. Numerical computations are carried out for the non-dimensional physical parameters. The results are analyzed for the effect of different physical parameters like visco-elasticity, permeability of the porous medium, Grashof number, Schmidt number and Prandtl number on the time, heat and mass transfer characteristics. One of the several important observations is that the combined effect of thermal diffusion and diffusion of species is to increase the horizontal velocity profile and to decrease the temperature and concentration profiles in the boundary layer flow field.