MHD BOUNDARY LAYER FLOW PAST AN INCLINED PLATE WITH VISCOUS DISSIPATION

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of inclination on the heat and mass transfer characteristics of a heated plate with viscous dissipation. An incompressible ferrofluid such as polyethylene oxide solution is made to uniformly flow over a heated plate and a transverse magnetic field applied to regulate the flow. The partial differential equations modeling the problem include the equation of mass conservation, the momentum equation, the energy equation and the concentration equation. The system of partial differential equations are transformed to a system of non linear ordinary differential equations by similarity transformation and solved with maple 16 by using the fourth order Runge Kutta method. The effects of variation of the angle of inclination α, the viscous dissipation parameter N, the chemical reaction parameter β and other relevant parameters have been displayed graphically, and corresponding numerical results tabulated and analyzed. It was evident that an increase in the angle of inclination resulted in significant increments in the velocity profile and skin friction coefficient in the boundary layer. It was also observed that increasing the angle of inclination from 0° to 10° (the cooling angle) caused the plate’s temperature and concentration to decrease. However increasing the angle of inclination above 10° caused the temperature of the plate to increase. Also an increase in the viscous dissipation parameter caused the plate’s temperature to rise.