ROTATING UNSTEADY MULTI-PHYSICO-CHEMICAL MAGNETO-MICROPOLAR TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA: GALERKIN FINITE ELEMENT STUDY

Abstract

In this paper, a mathematical model is developed for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD), incompressible, dissipative and chemically reacting micropolar fluid flow, heat and mass transfer through a porous medium from a vertical plate with Hall current, Soret and Dufour effects. The entire system rotates with uniform angular velocity about an axis normal to the plate. Rosseland’s diffusion approximation is used to describe the radiative heat flux in the energy equation. The governing partial differential equations for momentum, heat, angular momentum and species conservation are transformed into dimensionless form under the assumption of low Reynolds number with appropriate dimensionless quantities. The emerging boundary value problem is then solved numerically with a Galerkin finite element method employing the weighted residual approach. The evolution of translational velocity, micro-rotation (angular velocity), temperature and concentration are studied in detail. The influence of many multi-physical parameters in these variables is illustrated graphically. Finally, the friction factor, surface heat transfer and mass transfer rate dependency on the emerging thermo-physical parameters are also tabulated. The finite element code is benchmarked with the results reported in the literature to check the validity and accuracy under some limiting cases and an excellent agreement with published solutions is achieved. The study is relevant to rotating MHD energy generators utilizing non-Newtonian working fluids and also magnetic rheo-dynamic materials processing systems.