Unsteady MHD free convective Couette flow between vertical porous plates with thermal radiation

Abstract

This study investigates the unsteady MHD free convective Couette flow of viscous incompressible electrically conducting fluid between two infinite vertical porous plates in the presence of transverse magnetic field and thermal radiation. Solutions for time dependent energy and momentum equations are obtained by the implicit finite difference method. To check the accuracy of the numerical solutions, steady state solutions for energy and momentum equations are obtained by using the perturbation method. The effect of various parameters controlling the physical situation is discussed with the aid of line graphs. Significant results from this study are that both velocity and temperature increase with the increase in thermal radiation parameter and time. A series of numerical experiments show that steady state velocity and temperature occur when the dimensionless time approaches the values of Prandtl number of the fluid. During the course of numerical computation, an excellent agreement was found between unsteady and steady state solutions at large value of time.