Effects of thermal radiation on MHD viscous fluid flow and heat transfer over nonlinear shrinking porous sheet

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of thermal radiation on the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow and heat transfer over a nonlinear shrinking porous sheet. The surface velocity of the shrinking sheet and the transverse magnetic field are assumed to vary as a power function of the distance from the origin. The temperature dependent viscosity and the thermal conductivity are also assumed to vary as an inverse function and a linear function of the temperature, respectively. A generalized similarity transformation is used to reduce the governing partial differential equations to their nonlinear coupled ordinary differential equations, and is solved numerically by using a finite difference scheme. The numerical results concern with the velocity and temperature profiles as well as the local skin-friction coefficient and the rate of the heat transfer at the porous sheet for different values of several physical parameters of interest.