Thermal boundary layer flow of a micropolar fluid past a wedge with constant wall temperature

Abstract

The steady laminar flow of micropolar fluids past a wedge has been examined with constant surface temperature. The similarity variables found by Falkner and Skan are employed to reduce the streamwise-dependence in the coupled nonlinear boundary layer equation. Numerical solutions are presented for the heat transfer characteristics with Pr=1 using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method, and their dependence on the material parameters is discussed. The distributions of dimensionless temperature and Nusselt number across the boundary layer are compared with the corresponding flow problems for a Newtonian fluid over wedges. Numerical results show that for a constant wedge angle with a given Prandtl number Pr=1, the effect of increasing values ofK results in an increasing thermal boundary thickness for a micropolar fluid, as compared with a Newtonian fluid. For the case of the constant material parameterK, however, the heat transfer rate for a micropolar fluid is lower than that of a Newtonian fluid.