Stability Analysis of MHD Fluid Flow over a Moving Plate with Pressure Gradient Using the Chebyshev Spectral Method

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the magnetohydrodynamic stability external flow of a viscous, incompressible and electrically conducting fluid over a moving flat plate using temporal linear stability analysis. Using a similarity variables based on the Skan-Falkner transformation, the governing differential equations of mean flow are transformed into a nonlinear ordinary differential equation, which is then solved numerically by the Runge-Kutta method. The MHD stability equation is solved numerically by using the Chebyshev spectral collocation method, which is based on the eigenfunction expansion in terms of Chebyshev polynomials, collocation points, and the subsequent solution of the resulting generalized eigenvalue problem with the QZ algorithm. The influence of the pressure gradient, magnetic field and wall velocity on the dimensionless mean velocity are presented graphically and discussed. For the disturbance flow in the presence of magnetic field and moving wall, the critical Reynolds number increases with increasing the magnetic field parameter and wall velocity, indicating that these parameters stabilize the flow.