Effect of wall conduction on natural convection flow of micropolar fluids along a flat plate

Abstract

This article numerically studies the coupling of wall conduction with laminar free convective heat transfer of micropolar fluids along a vertical flat plate. The governing boundary layer equations along with the boundary conditions are first cast into a dimensionless form by a nonsimilar transformation and the resulting equations are then solved by the cubic spline collocation method. The effects of the conjugate heat transfer parameter p, the micropolar material parameter Δ and the Prandtl number Pr on the flow and thermal fields are discussed in detail. The results clearly indicate that the conjugate heat transfer parameter has a significant influence on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics in comparison with those reported for isothermal flat plate. The interfacial temperature increases monotonically along the streamwise direction. The conjugate heat transfer parameter is to reduce the solid-liquid interfacial temperature, the skin friction factor, the wall couple stress and the local heat transfer rate. The effect of wall conduction on the local heat transfer rate is more pronounced for a system with larger Prandtl numbers or smaller micropolar material parameters. In addition, comparing it to Newtonian fluids, a reduction in the skin friction factor and the local heat transfer rate is reported.