Numerical study on radiative MHD flow of viscoelastic fluids with distributed-order and variable-order space fractional operators

Abstract

The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow has been concerned widely for its widespread adoption in the field of astrophysics, electronics and many other industries over the years. The purpose of this article is to introduce the variable and distributed order space fractional models to characterize the MHD flow and heat transfer of heterogeneous viscoelastic fluids in a parallel plates. Based on the central difference approximation of Riesz space fractional derivative, the Crank–Nicolson difference scheme for the governing equations is established, and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by two numerical examples. We examine the effects of fractional-order model parameters on the velocity and temperature, our investigation indicates that for the constant fractional model, the larger the fractional order parameter, the smaller the velocity and temperature. The variable space fractional method can be used to describe dynamic behavior with time and space dependence, while the distributed space fractional model can describe various phenomena in which the number of differential orders varies over a certain range, characterizing their complex processes over space, and it is also more suitable for simulating the fluid flow and thermal behavior of complex viscoelastic magnetic fluid.