Thermal radiation effects on the flow and heat transfer in a liquid film on an unsteady stretching sheet

The influence of thermal radiation on the flow and heat transfer within Newtonian liquid film over an unsteady stretching sheet with and without thermocapillarity is examined. The governing non‐linear partial differential equations describing the problem are reduced to a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations using similarity transformation, which is solved numerically for different values of the thermal radiation parameter and the thermocapillarity parameter. The results show that the dimensionless velocity, the film thickness and the local Nusselt number increase as the thermocapillarity parameter increases, while the free surface temperature decreases with increasing the thermocapillarity parameter. Also, both the dimensionless temperature and the free surface temperature increase and the local Nusselt number decreases as the thermal radiation parameter increases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.