Natural Convection Flow along an Isothermal Vertical Flat Plate with Temperature Dependent Viscosity and Heat Generation

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the natural convection laminar flow along an isothermal vertical flat plate immersed in a fluid with viscosity which is the exponential function of fluid temperature in presence of internal heat generation. The governing boundary layer equations are transformed into a nondimensional form and the resulting nonlinear system of partial differential equations is reduced to a convenient form which are solved numerically using an efficient marching order implicit finite difference method with double sweep technique. Numerical results are presented in terms of the velocity and temperature distribution of the fluid as well as the heat transfer characteristics, namely, the wall shear stress and the local and average rate of heat transfer in terms of the local skin-friction coefficient, the local and average Nusselt number for a wide range of the viscosity-variation parameter, heat generation parameter, and the Rayleigh number. Increasing viscosity variation parameter and Rayleigh number lead to increasing the local and average Nusselt number and decreasing the wall shear stress. Wall shear stress and the rate of heat transfer decreased due to the increase of heat generation.