| Abstract: | The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of an incompressible, viscous, electrically conducting fluid in a rectangular duct with an external magnetic field applied transverse to the flow has been investigated. The walls parallel to the applied magnetic field are conducting while the other two walls which are perpendicular to the field are insulators. The boundary element method (BEM) with constant elements has been used to cast the problem into the form of an integral equation over the boundary and to obtain a system of algebraic equations for the boundary unknown values only. The solution of this integral equation presents no problem as encountered in the solution of the singular integral equations for interior methods. Computations have been carried out for several values of the Hartmann number (1 ? M ? 10). It is found that as M increases, boundary layers are formed close to the insulated boundaries for both the velocity and the induced magnetic field and in the central part their behaviours are uniform. Selected graphs are given showing the behaviours of the velocity and the induced magnetic field. |
