Abstract:

The effects of temperature-dependent viscosity and thermal conductivity on free convection magnetohydrodynamic flow of an optically thin gray, viscous, and incompressible micropolar fluid and heat transfer past a stretching plate through porous medium in the presence of radiation, heat generation, and Joule dissipation were studied. The fluid viscosity and thermal conductivity were assumed to vary as inverse linear functions of temperature. Using similarity transformation, the governing partial differential equations of motion were reduced to ordinary ones, which were solved numerically for prescribed boundary conditions using the shooting method. Numerical results for the velocity, angular velocity, and temperature profiles are shown graphically and the skin friction and Nusselt number are presented in tabular form for various values of the parameters, giving the flow and heat transfer characteristics. We found that viscosity enhanced microrotation, while an increase in thermal conductivity reduced the temperature.

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