Flow and heat transfer of power-law fluid over a rotating disk with generalized diffusion

Abstract

The study of swirling flows and heat transfer near various rotating machines, such as fans, turbines and centrifugal pumps, is necessary and important for many manufacturing processes in industry, especially the cooling of turbojet engines. The flow and heat transfer of power-law fluids over an infinite rotating disk is investigated in this paper. A generalized Fourier heat transfer model is introduced in which the thermal conductivity is assumed to depend on temperature gradient. New similarity variables are defined and the governing equations in the boundary layer are reduced to a set of coupling ordinary differential equations. An improved multi-shooting method is proposed to solve the resulting singular boundary value problems. The effects of the power-law index and local Prandtl number on velocity, pressure and temperature fields are analyzed. Especially, the viscosity coefficient and heat conductivity are discussed.