Radiation effects on MHD free convection flow in presence of joule heating and heat generation from a vertical flat plate

Abstract

In this dissertation, the effect of radiation on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) free convection flow along a vertical flat plate in presence of Joule heating and heat generation have been investigated. The governing equations associated with the conduction based boundary conditions are transformed into dimensionless form employing the appropriate transformations and then solved numerically using the implicit finite difference method with Keller box scheme (1978). The numerical solutions are obtained in terms of velocity profiles, temperature distributions, skin friction coefficient, surface temperature distributions and heat transfer rate and then presented graphically and discussed. Afterward, the above effects on MHD free convection boundary layer flow with viscous dissipation are also analyzed. A complete parametric analysis is done on these numerical results to show the effects of the magnetic parameter, radiation parameter, Joule heating parameter, heat generation parameter and Prandtl number. It is found that radiation, Joule heating and heat generation play significant role on MHD natural convection flow during heat transfer. It is also found that the velocity and temperature of the fluid within the boundary layer and the skin friction and surface temperature along the plate increase due to the effect of viscous dissipation parameter. To illustrate the accuracy of the results, the present results for the local skin friction and surface temperature distribution excluding the effects of radiation, Joule heating and heat generation are compared with the results of Merkin and Pop (1996) and Alim et al. (2008) designed for the fixed value of Prandtl number and an excellent agreement were found.