Heat transfer characteristics of thin power-law liquid films over horizontal stretching sheet with internal heating and variable thermal coefficient

Abstract

The effect of internal heating source on the film momentum and thermal transport characteristic of thin finite power-law liquids over an accelerating unsteady horizontal stretched interface is studied. Unlike most classical works in this field, a general surface temperature distribution of the liquid film and the generalized Fourier’s law for varying thermal conductivity are taken into consideration. Appropriate similarity transformations are used to convert the strongly nonlinear governing partial differential equations (PDEs) into a boundary value problem with a group of two-point ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The correspondence between the liquid film thickness and the unsteadiness parameter is derived with the BVP4C program in MATLAB. Numerical solutions to the self-similarity ODEs are obtained using the shooting technique combined with a Runge-Kutta iteration program and Newton’s scheme. The effects of the involved physical parameters on the fluid’s horizontal velocity and temperature distribution are presented and discussed.