Effects of temperature dependent fluid properties and variable Prandtl number on the transient convective flow due to a porous rotating disk

In this paper we have studied the effects of temperature dependent fluid properties such as density, viscosity and thermal conductivity and variable Prandtl number on unsteady convective heat transfer flow over a porous rotating disk. Using similarity transformations we reduce the governing nonlinear partial differential equations for flow and heat transfer into a system of ordinary differential equations which are then solved numerically by applying Nachtsheim–Swigert shooting iteration technique along with sixth-order Runge–Kutta integration scheme. Comparison with previously published work for steady case of the problem were performed and found to be in very good agreement. The obtained numerical results show that the rate of heat transfer in a fluid of constant properties is higher than in a fluid of variable properties. The results further show that consideration of Prandtl number as constant within the boundary layer for variable fluid properties lead unrealistic results. Therefore, modeling thermal boundary layers with temperature dependent fluid properties Prandtl number must treated as variable inside the boundary layer.     

Locally similar solutions for hydromagnetic and thermal slip flow boundary layers over a flat plate with variable fluid properties and convective surface boundary condition

This paper presents heat transfer process in a two-dimensional steady hydromagnetic convective flow of an electrically conducting fluid over a flat plate with partial slip at the surface of the boundary subjected to the convective surface heat flux at the boundary. The analysis accounts for both temperature-dependent viscosity and temperature dependent thermal conductivity. The local similarity equations are derived and solved numerically using the Nachtsheim-Swigert iteration procedure. Results for the dimensionless velocity, temperature and ambient Prandtl number within the boundary layer are displayed graphically delineating the effect of various parameters characterizing the flow. The results show that momentum boundary layer thickness significantly depends on the surface convection parameter, Hartmann number and on the sign of the variable viscosity parameter. The results also show that plate surface temperature is higher when there is no slip at the plate compared to its presence. For both slip and no-slip cases surface temperature of the plate can be controlled by controlling the strength of the applied magnetic field. In modelling the thermal boundary layer flow with variable viscosity and variable thermal conductivity, the Prandtl number must be treated as a variable irrespective of flow conditions whether there is slip or no-slip at the boundary to obtain realistic results.     

The effects of variable properties on MHD unsteady natural convection heat and mass transfer over a vertical wavy surface

A mathematical model will be analyzed in order to study the effects of variables viscosity and thermal conductivity on unsteady heat and mass transfer over a vertical wavy surface in the presence of magnetic field numerically by using a simple coordinate transformation to transform the complex wavy surface into a flat plate. The fluid viscosity is assumed to vary as a exponential function of temperature and thermal conductivity is assumed to vary linearly with temperature. An implicit marching Chebyshev collocation scheme is employed for the analysis. Numerical solutions are obtained for different values of variable viscosity, variable thermal conductivity and MHD variation parameter. Numerical results show that, variable viscosity, variable thermal conductivity and MHD variation parameter have significant influences on the velocity, temperature and concentration profiles as well as for the local skin friction, Nusselt number and Sherwood number.     

Numerical study on a vertical plate with variable viscosity and thermal conductivity

Free convection over an isothermal vertical plate immersed in a fluid with variable viscosity and thermal conductivity is studied in this paper. We consider the two-dimensional, laminar and unsteady boundary layer equations. Using the appropriate variables, the basic governing equations are transformed to non-dimensional governing equations. These equations are then solved numerically using a very efficient implicit finite difference scheme known as Crank–Nicolson scheme. The fluid considered in this study is of viscous incompressible fluid of temperature dependent viscosity and thermal conductivity. The effect of varying viscosity and thermal conductivity on velocity, temperature, shear stress and heat transfer rate are discussed. The velocity and temperature profiles are compared with previously published works and are found to be in good agreement.     

Combined convection in power-law fluids along a nonisothermal vertical plate in a porous medium

The problem of combined convection from vertical surfaces in a porous medium saturated with a power-law type non-Newtonian fluid is investigated. The transformed conservation laws are solved numerically for the case of variable surface heat flux conditions. Results for the details of the velocity and temperature fields as well as the Nusselt number have been presented. The viscosity index ranged from 0.5 to 2.0.     

Effect of variable thermal conductivity and viscosity on single phase convective heat transfer in slip flow

For a variety of fields in which micro-mechanical systems and electronic components are used, fluid flow and heat transfer at the microscale needs to be understood and modeled with an acceptable reliability. In general, models are prepared by making some extensions to the conventional theories by including the scaling effects that become important for microscale. Some of these effects are; axial conduction, viscous dissipation, and rarefaction. In addition to these effects, temperature variable thermal conductivity and viscosity may become important in microscale gas flows due to the high temperature gradients that may exist in the fluid. For this purpose, simultaneously developing, single phase, laminar and incompressible air flow in a microtube and in the micro gap between parallel plates is numerically analyzed. Navier–Stokes and energy equations are solved and the variation of Nusselt number along the channel is presented in tabular and graphical forms as a function of Knudsen, Peclet, and Brinkman numbers, including temperature variable thermal conductivity and viscosity.     

Free convection flow over an uniform-heat-flux surface with temperature-dependent viscosity

The role of temperature-dependent viscosity is studied in laminar free convection flow adjacent to a vertical surface with uniform heat flux. The resulting non-similar equations are solved by using a suitable variable transformation and employing an implicit finite difference method. It is shown that the constant viscosity results evaluated at the ambient fluid temperature underestimate the Nusselt number and overestimate the drag coefficient. The heat transfer predictions for large values of the viscosity parameter may be two times the constant viscosity parameter prediction. The present analysis is in good agreement with the corresponding correlation of previous experimental investigation.     

Entropy generation for pipe flow of a third grade fluid with Vogel model viscosity

The flow of fluid-solid mixtures in a pipe can be treated as non-Newtonian fluids of third grade. Depending upon the fluid viscosity, entropy generation in the flow system varies. In the present study, flow of third grade fluid in a pipe is considered. The Vogel model is introduced to account for the temperature-dependent viscosity. Entropy generation due to fluid friction and heat transfer in the flow system is formulated. The influence of viscosity parameters A and B on the entropy generation number is investigated. It is found that increasing viscosity parameter A reduces the entropy generation number and opposite is true for increasing viscosity parameter B.     

Cooling of a viscoelastic film during unsteady extrusion from an annular die

The unsteady extrusion of a viscoelastic film from an annular and axisymmetric die is examined. External, elastic, viscous and inertia forces deform the film, which is simultaneously cooled via forced convection to the ambient air. This moving boundary problem is solved by mapping the liquid/air interfaces onto fixed ones and by employing a regular perturbation expansion for all the dependent variables. The ratio of the film thickness to its inner radius at the exit of the die is used as the small parameter in the perturbation expansion. The fluid mechanical aspects of the process depend on the Stokes, Deborah, Reynolds, and Capillary numbers. The heat transfer in the film and to the environment gives rise to four additional dimensionless groups: the Peclet, Biot and Brinkman numbers and the activation energy, which determines the temperature dependence of fluid viscosity and elasticity. A variable heat transfer coefficient is also considered. For typical fluid properties and process conditions, the Peclet number is very large. In this case it is the ratio of the Biot to the Peclet number, the Stanton number, which arises in the energy conservation equation. It is shown that film cooling becomes important when the Stanton number and/or the activation energy are in the high-end of their typical values. In such cases, the cooling of the parison leads to a more uniform flow and shape for the film. The influence on the process of a variable heat transfer coefficient and the Brinkman number is small. Received: 7 April 1999/Accepted: 10 August 1999     

Effects of a transverse flows with variable viscosity in micropolar fluids

A regular perturbation analysis is presented for three laminar natural convection flows in micropolar fluids in liquids with temperature dependent viscosity: a freely-rising plane plume, the flow above a horizontal line source on an adiabatic surface (a plane wall plume) and the flow adjacent to a vertical uniform flux surface. While these flows have well-known power-low similarity solutions when the fluid viscosity is taken to be constant, they are non-similar when the viscosity is considered to a function of temperature. A single similar flow, that adjacent to a vertical isothermal surface, is also analysed for comparison in order to estimate the extent of validity of perturbation analysis. The formulation used here provides a unified treatment of variable viscosity effects on those four flows. Computed first-order perturbation quantities are presented for all four flows. Numerical results for velocity, angular velocity and thermal functions has been shown graphically or tabulated for different values of micropolar parameters. Received on 20 October 1997     

Effect of variable viscosity on boundary layer flow along a continuously moving plate with variable surface temperature

Flow of an incompressible viscous fluid past a continuously moving semi-infinite plate is studied by taking into account variable viscosity and variable temperature. Velocity and temperature profiles are shown graphically whereas the numerical values of the skin-friction and the rate of heat transfer are listed in a table. The effect of different parameters on the flow field is discussed.     

Lubrication of a rotating circular thrust bearing with a casson lubricant

Lubricants today are subjected to increasing mechanical shearing forces. This has resulted in an increasing interest in materials having variable viscosity. The problem of rotating circular thrust bearing is investigated with Casson fluid as a shear thinning lubricant. The pressure and load capacity of the thrust bearing is calculated when the feeding is done from the centre of the plates to the periphery. Also, moment of friction acting on the plates is calculated for different values of Casson number and for various values of ratio of inside to outside radius. It has been found that there is a decrease in the value of load capacity of the Casson lubricant. Also, it has been observed that there is an appreciable increase in the values of moment of friction for Casson fluid.     

Study of visco-elastic fluid flow and heat transfer over a stretching sheet with variable viscosity

This paper deals with the study of boundary layer flow and heat transfer of a visco-elastic fluid immersed in a porous medium over a non-isothermal stretching sheet. The fluid viscosity is assumed to vary as a function of temperature. The presence of variable viscosity of the fluid leads to the coupling and the non-linearity in the boundary value problem. A numerical shooting algorithm for two unknown initial conditions with fourth-order Runge-Kutta integration scheme has been used to solve the coupled non-linear boundary value problem. An analysis has been carried out for two different cases namely (1) prescribed surface temperature (PST), and (2) prescribed heat flux (PHF), to get the effect of fluid viscosity, permeability parameter and visco-elastic parameter for various situations. The important finding of our study is that the effect of fluid viscosity parameter is to decrease the wall temperature profile significantly when flow is through a porous medium. Further, the effect of permeability parameter is to decrease the skin friction on the sheet.     

One-Dimensional Matrix-Fracture Transfer in Dual Porosity Systems with Variable Block Size Distribution

Most of the developed models for fractured reservoirs assume ideal matrix block size distribution. This assumption may not be valid in reality for naturally fractured reservoirs and possibly lead to errors in prediction of production from the naturally fractured reservoirs especially during a transient period or early time production from the matrix blocks. In this study, we investigate the effect of variable block size distribution on one- dimensional flow of compressible fluids in fractured reservoirs. The effect of different matrix block size distributions on the single phase matrix-fracture transfer is studied using a recently developed semi-analytical approach. The proposed model is able to simulate fluid exchange between matrix and fracture for continuous or discrete block size distributions using probability density functions or structural information of a fractured formation. The presented semi-analytical model demonstrates a good accuracy compared to the numerical results. There have been recent attempts to consider the effect of variable block size distribution in naturally fractured reservoir modeling for slightly compressible fluids with a constant viscosity and compressibility. The main objective of this study is to consider the effect of variable block size distribution on a one-dimensional matrix-fracture transfer function for single-phase flow of a compressible fluid in fractured porous media. In the proposed semi-analytical model, the pressure variability of viscosity and isothermal compressibility is considered by solving the nonlinear partial differential equation of compressible fluid flow in the fractured media. The closed form solution provided can be applied to flow of compressible fluids with variable matrix block size distribution in naturally fractured gas reservoirs.     

The viscous squeeze-film behaviour of shear-thinning fluids

A finite element technique is proposed to predict the purely viscous squeeze-film behaviour of an arbitrary shear-thinning fluid confined between parallel discs and subjected to a constant load. The technique requires establishment of the distribution of viscosity in the gap. The variable viscosity is modelled by a discrete number of Newtonian fluids, with each fluid lying in a region bounded by lines of constant shear rate. Each of these Newtonian regions is further divided into regions which appear as “finite element” rectangles in the r-z plane. The equations governing squeeze-film flow are applied to this finite element network and an ordinary differential equation is ultimately derived which governs the gap decrease with time. Solving this equation is not simple because the coefficients of two terms change as the gap decreases. When the number of Newtonian fluids is sufficient, the technique predicts the squeeze-film time of a power-law fluid to within a fraction of a percent. Application of the technique to synovial fluid viscosity prevents the cartilage surfaces from touching for only a fraction of a second.     

The Effect of Magnetic Field Dependent Viscosity on Thermosolutal Convection in a Ferromagnetic Fluid Saturating a Porous Medium

The effect of magnetic field dependent viscosity on thermosolutal convection in a ferromagnetic fluid saturating a porous medium is considered for a fluid layer heated and soluted from below in the presence of uniform magnetic field. Using linearized stability theory and normal mode analysis, an exact solution is obtained for the case of two free boundaries. For case of stationary convection, medium permeability has a destabilizing effect, whereas a stable solute gradient and magnetic field dependent viscosity have a stabilizing effect on the system. In the absence of magnetic field dependent viscosity, the destabilizing effect of non-buoyancy magnetization is depicted but in the presence of magnetic field dependent viscosity non-buoyancy magnetization may have a destabilizing or stabilizing effect on the onset of instability. The critical wave number and the critical magnetic thermal Rayleigh number for the onset of instability are also determined numerically for sufficiently large values of buoyancy magnetization parameter M₁ and the results are depicted graphically. The principle of exchange of stabilities is found to hold true for the ferromagnetic fluid saturating a porous medium heated from below in the absence of stable solute gradient. The oscillatory modes are introduced due to the presence of the stable solute gradient, which were non-existent in its absence. A sufficient condition for the non-existence of overstability is also obtained. The paper also reaffirms the qualitative findings of earlier investigations which are, in fact, limiting cases of the present study.     

Radiation Effect on MHD Free Convection Flow of a Gas Past a Semi-infinite Vertical Plate with Variable Viscosity

The radiation effect in the presence of a uniform transverse magnetic field on steady free convection flow with variable viscosity is investigated. The fluid viscosity is assumed to vary as the reciprocal of a linear function of temperature. Boundary layer equations are derived. The resulting approximate non-linear ordinary differential equations are solved linearly and nonlinearly by shooting methods. The velocity and temperature profiles are shown, and the skin friction on the plate and heat transfer coefficient are presented and discussed. The results of the present study show that in the presence of magnetic field, as the radiation parameter increases the temperature increases, but the velocity decreases.     

Scaling group transformation on fluid flow with variable stream conditions

Thermophoresis particle deposition with chemical reaction on Magnetohydrodynamic flow of an electrically conducting fluid over a porous stretching sheet in the presence of a uniform transverse magnetic field with variable stream conditions is investigated using scaling group transformation. Starting from Navier-Stokes equations and using scaling group transformations, the governing equations are obtained in the form of differential equations. The fluid viscosity is assumed to vary as a linear function of temperature. It is found that the decrease in the temperature-dependent fluid viscosity makes the velocity to decrease with the increasing distance of the stretching sheet. At a particular point of the sheet the fluid velocity decreases with the decreasing viscosity but the temperature increases in this case. Impact of thermophoresis particle deposition in the presence of chemical reaction plays an important role on the concentration boundary layer. The results thus obtained are presented graphically and discussed.     

Localisation of optimal perturbations in variable viscosity channel flow

We discuss how a variable fluid viscosity affects the nonmodal stability characteristics of the pressure driven flow between two parallel walls maintained at different temperatures. In this work, we specify the fluid viscosity to be a function of the fluid temperature. We employ an Arrhenius model to model the viscosity of water, and Sutherland’s law to model the viscosity of air. We impose a stable density stratification, and find that strong density stratification can suppress optimal transient growth regardless of how strong the viscosity variation is. Some studies have been inclined to neglect viscosity stratification, since the changes in levels of optimal growth, when compared to the uniform viscosity case, are often not too significant. In this article, we show significant localisation of optimal perturbation energy in the less viscous region, a feature that is not observed in uniform viscosity flows. This can have a bearing on the route to turbulence in these systems.     

Surfactant spreading on a thin weakly viscoelastic film

A mathematical model is presented for surfactant-driven thin weakly viscoelastic film flows on a flat, impermeable plane. The Oldroyd-B constitutive relation is used to model the viscoelastic fluid. Lubrication theory and a perturbation expansion in powers of the Weissenberg number (We) are employed, which give rise to non-linear coupled evolution equations governing the transport of insoluble surfactant and thin liquid film thickness. Spreading on a Newtonian film is recovered to leading order and corrections to viscoelasticity are obtained at order We. These equations are solved numerically over a wide range of viscosity ratio (ratio of solvent viscosity to the sum of solvent and polymeric viscosities), pre-existing surfactant level and Peclet number (Pe). The effect of viscoelasticity on surfactant transport and fluid flow is investigated and the mechanisms underlying this effect are explored. Shear stress, streamwise normal stress and the temporal rate of change of extra shear stress generated from gradients in surfactant concentration dominate thin viscoelastic film flows whereas only shear stresses play a role in Newtonian thin film flows. Our results also reveal that, for weak viscoelasticity, the influence of viscosity ratio on the evolution of surfactant concentration and film thickness can be significant and varies considerably, depending on the concentration of pre-existing surfactant and surfactant surface diffusivity.