Natural convection flow of micropolar fluid from a permeable uniform heat flux surface in porous medium

Abstract

Natural convection flow of micropolar fluid along a vertical and a permeable semi-infinite plate embedded in a porous medium have been considered. A nonsimilarity solution is obtained for the case of uniform heat flux. A finite-difference scheme was used to solve the system of transformed governing equations. The obtained results are presented. A parametric study illustrating the influence of the Prandtl number, micropolar parameters, Darcy number, inertia coefficient and wall mass transfer on the velocities and temperature fields, skin friction, couple stress as well as the Nusselt number are investigated. The results of this parametric study are shown graphically and the physical aspects of the problem are discussed. It is found that the enhancement of the wall heat transfer represented by increasing in the Nusselt number. But the values of the skin friction parameter and couple stress decrease as the suction parameter increases. Furthermore, the presence of inertia coefficient tends to decreases the local Nusselt number. In comparison to the Newtonian fluids, we found that the micropolar fluid enhances the skin friction and reduces the heat transfer rate.