Effect of the aspect ratio on the flow characteristics of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) third grade fluid flow through a rectangular channel

Abstract

The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of a third grade fluid through a rectangular channel, considering the effect of aspect ratio, has been investigated. The flow considered is steady, laminar, incompressible and hydro-dynamically fully developed. The equation, describing the flow, is a highly non-linear partial differential equation (PDE) with remote possibility of having an exact solution and even numerical solution also is very difficult to obtain. A combination of the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and integral method (IM) has been employed to solve the non-linear PDE which is scarce in open literature. The results of the present study are compared with the results obtained by the least square method (LSM) of the MHD third grade fluid flow through a rectangular channel, without the effect of aspect ratio and are found to be in close agreement. The results indicate that the flow field is significantly affected by the aspect ratio which should be considered for practical applications. In all the available literatures of the third grade fluid flow, the aspect ratio effect is neglected and this simplifying assumption reduces the highly complicated non-linear PDE to a non-linear ordinary differential equation (ODE). The novelty of the subject work lies in the inclusion of the effects of aspect ratio in the governing equation describing the flow of a third grade fluid through a channel and solving this by a combined analytical method (HPM and IM). Further, the effects of the Hartmann number and non-Newtonian third grade fluid parameter on the flow filed are discussed.