Boundary Layer Flow and Heat Transfer of Micropolar Fluid over a Vertical Exponentially Stretched Cylinder

Abdul Rehman¹, Razmak Bazai¹, Sallahuddin Achakzai¹, Saleem Iqbal¹, Muhammad Naseer²

¹Department of Mathematics, University of Balochistan, Quetta, Pakistan

²Department of Mathematics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

Email Eddress:

(A. Rehman)

(R. Bazai)

(S. Achakzai)

(S. Iqbal)

(M. Naseer)

To cite this article:

Abdul Rehman, Razmak Bazai, Sallahuddin Achakzai, Saleem Iqbal, Muhammad Naseer. Boundary Layer Flow and Heat Transfer of Micropolar Fluid over a Vertical Exponentially Stretched Cylinder.Applied and Computational Mathematics.Vol.4, No. 6, 2015, pp. 424-430. doi: 10.11648/j.acm.20150406.15

Abstract: The current paper offers an analysis of the steady boundary layer flow and heat transfer of a non-Newtonian micropolar fluid flowing through a vertical exponentially stretching cylinder along its axial axis. The obtained system of nonlinear partial differential equations along with the appropriate boundary conditions is abridged to dimensionless form by means of the boundary layer estimates and a suitable similarity transformation. The subsequent nonlinear coupled system of ordinary differential equations subject to the appropriate boundary conditions is solved numerically with the help of Keller-box method. The effects of the involved parameters are presented through graphs. The allied physical features for the flow and heat transfer characteristics that is the skinfriction coefficient and Nusselt numbers are presented for different parameters.

Keywords: Boundary Layer Flow, Vertical Cylinder, Micropolar Fluid, Heat Dissipation, Keller-Box Method

1. Introduction

The fundamental idea about the micropolar fluid was given by Egingen [1] because the Newtonian fluid theory does not exhibits all the properties of some complex nature fluids like liquid crystals, suspensions containing micro size particles, lubricants are a few particular examples of micropolar fluids. The idea was to make use of the law of conservation of angular momentum along with the conservation of mass and linear momentum. In recent years many researchers have discussed the study of micropolar fluids for different geometries and various situations due to its real world applications. Rosali et al [2] have prescribed the behavior of micropolar fluids flowing towards a permeable stretching sheet immersed in a porous medium and the fluid flow was assumed to be effected via suction through the surface of the sheet. The problem of heat generation or absorption effects over the heat transfer and stagnation-point fluid flow of a micropolar fluid flowing over a stretching surface is presented by Attia [3]. His effort indicated that the micropolar fluid parameter effects over flow and heat transfer depends upon the stretching velocity magnitude. Further, Nazar et al [4] have analyzed the problem of unsteady, boundary layer, incompressible flow of a micropolar fluid over a stretching sheet. Moreover, Nadeem et al [5] have provided the analytical analysis of the problem of axisymmetric stagnation flow of a micropolar nanofluid in a moving cylinder. The fluid flow was assumed to be through the annular region between the two concentric cylinders. In another work, Nadeem et al [6] have inspected the influence of micropolar fluid flow in a vertical annulus. Few other interesting works concerning the micropolar fluid flow for different geometries are referred in [7-10].

Fluid flow over a cylinder that is stretched linearly along its axial direction has gained much attention in recent years. Bachok and Ishak [11] have tackled the problem of laminar flow of an incompressible viscous fluid flow over a stretching cylinder with prescribed surface heat flux. In a fresh attempt, Gang et al [12] have debated the problem of unsteady viscous fluid flowing over a stretching cylinder. In another work, Fag and Yao [13] have discussed the viscous swirling flow over a stretching cylinder. Recently, Wang [14] has communicated the influence of natural convection heat transfer over a vertical stretching cylinder. Few pertinent works concerning the boundary layer flow over stretching surfaces are cited in [15-21]. The determination of the contemporary effort is to provide a numerical solution for the flow of a non-Newtonian micropolar fluid flowing over a vertical cylinder that is stretched exponentially along the axial direction taking into account the dissipation effects. The numerical solutions are computed by applying the second order finite difference scheme, known as the Keller-box technique. The influence of involved parameters is graphed in the results and discussion section. The important physical features associated with the problem like the skinfriction coefficient and the local Nusselt numbers are discussed at the end.

2. Formulation

Consider the problem of mixed convection boundary layer flow of a viscous fluid flowing over a vertical circular cylinder of radius a. The cylinder is assumed to be stretching exponentially along the axial direction with velocity  The temperature at the surface of the cylinder is assumed to be a constant and the uniform ambient temperature is taken to be  such that the quantity  in case of the assisting flow, while  in case of the opposing flow, respectively. Under these assumptions the boundary layer equations of motion and heat transfer are

(2)

(4)

where the velocity components along the  axes are ,  is density, is the kinematic viscosity,  is pressure,  is the gravitational acceleration along the direction,  is the coefficient of thermal expansion,  is the angular velocity,  is the micropolar parameter,  is the micropolar constant,  is the microrotation density,  is the temperature,  is the thermal diffusivity and  is the specific heat at constant pressure. The corresponding boundary conditions for the problem are

(5)

(6)

(7)

where  is the fluid velocity at the surface of the cylinder.

3. Solution of the Problem

Introduce the following similarity transformations:

(8)

(9)

where the characteristic temperature difference is calculated from the relations  With the help of transformations  and ,   to  take the form

(10)

(11)

(12)

in which  is the Reynolds number, is the micropolar parameter,  is the natural convection parameter, and  are the micropolar coefficients,  is the Prandtl number and  is the Eckert number. The boundary conditions in nondimensional form become

(13)

(14)

(15)

The important physical quantities such as the shear stress at the surface  the skinfriction coefficient  the heat flux at the surface of the cylinder  and the local Nusselt number  are

(16)

(17)

The solution of  subject to the boundary conditions  is obtained through the highly sufficient second order numerical scheme called the Keller-box technique. To develop the technique, the system of differential equations  along with the boundary conditions  is converted into a first order differential system by choosing

(18)

the resulting system can be stated now as

(19)

(20)

(21)

with the boundary conditions

(22)

(23)

(24)

Further details of the numeric solution can be found in references [22-25]. The detailed discussion about the obtained numeric solutions is presented in the next section.

4. Results and Discussion

The present work is an effort to provide a numerical scheme that gives the solution of the problem of natural convection boundary layer flow of a non-Newtonian micropolar fluid flowing over a vertical cylinder that is stretched exponentially along its axial axis. The numerical solutions of the problem are computed using the second order implicit finite difference scheme called the Keller-box method. The influence of the involved parameters is presented both graphically and in tabulated form in this section. The solutions are computed for both strong concentration  and weak concentration  of the angular velocity at the surface of the stretching cylinder.  displays the influence of velocity profile  for different combinations of Reynolds numbers  and the micropolar parameter  for fixed values of the other parameters. The solutions in are curved for strong concentration case and the range of Reynolds numbers is chosen up to  (such high values of  corresponds to turbulent flows). From , it clicks that with the increase in  the velocity profile decreases whereas with increase in  the velocity profile increases.  is graphed to observe the impact of natural convection parameter  and the Eckert number  From  it is observed that with increase in both  and  the velocity profile increases. This strengthen the observation that enhanced natural convection parameter  requires higher density difference in fluid that in return requests increase in fluid velocity. It is also noticed from  that the influence of natural convection parameter is more significant for higher values of Eckert numbers.  conveys the behavior of velocity profile  plotted for different values of micropolar parameter  for both the strong and weak concentration cases. From  it is noticed that the velocity profile  has larger values for strong concentration as compared with the weak concentration situation. The pattern adopted by the non-dimensional angular velocity profile  is presented for strong concentration in  for different combinations of involved parameters.  gives the impact of micropolar parameter  and natural convection parameter  over the micropolar velocity profile  From  it is noted that with increase in both  and  the micropolar velocity profile  decreases.  predicts the impact of micropolar coefficient  and the Reynolds numbers  for the micropolar velocity  From  it is witnessed that with increase in the micropolar velocity profile increases, whereas with increase in  the micropolar velocity profile  decreases. The imprint of micropolar parameter  Eckert numbers  and Prandtl numbers  over the non-dimensional micropolar velocity function is portrayed in  for the weak concentration case.  inculcates the imprint of micropolar velocity for different pairs of the micropolar parameter  and the Eckert numbers  From  it is observed that with increase in both  and  the angular velocity profile decreases. It is also noticed from  that the influence of  is significant for large values of the Eckert numbers   is sketched to observe the impact of Prandtl numbers  up to  over the micropolar velocity profile  From  it is observed that with increase in  the angular velocity profile decreases. The behavior of non-dimensional velocity profile is plotted in  for different combinations of Prandtl numbers, Eckert numbers, Reynolds numbers and micropolar parameter.  contains the curves predicting the influence of  and  over the temperature profile  From  it is noted that with increase in both  and  the temperature profile decreases.  shows the impact of  and  over the temperature profile  for Reynolds numbers up to . From  it is observed that with increase in both  and  the temperature profile and the thermal boundary layer thickness decays. The behavior of skinfriction coefficient  for different Prandtl numbers and Reynolds numbers is shown in  plotted against micropolar parameter  From the observed graph it is noted that with increase in all  and  the skinfriction coefficient increases. The pattern adopted by the local Nusselt numbers  for different Eckert numbers and Reynolds numbers curved against Prandtl numbers is presented in  From  it is observed that with increase in all the  and  the local Nusselt numbers increases.  shows the streamlines for the fluid flow sketched in the  plane graphed for different  The decaying pattern observed is slower for small values of

Fig. 1. Influence of Reynolds numbers  over velocity profile  for different .

Fig. 2. Influence of natural convection parameter  over velocity profile  for different .

The behavior of boundary derivatives for velocity, microrotation and temperature profiles is presented in  The values are computed at the surface of the stretching cylinder.  contains the values of the boundary derivatives for velocity profile that corresponds to the shear stress at the surface of the cylinder  From  it is noticed that with increase in the shear stress at the surface decreases, whereas with increase in Reynolds numbers shear stress increases. The computed vales of shear stress are larger for strong concentration as compared with the weak concentration situation.  is prepared for the boundary derivatives of the micropolar velocity profile calculated for different values of the involved parameters. From  it is seen that with increase in  and  the boundary derivatives increases.  shows the behavior of surface heat flux  computed for different values of the involved parameters. From  it is clear that with increase in   increases, whereas with increase in  and  heat flux at the surface decreases.

Fig. 3. Influence of micropolar parameter  over velocity profile  for different

Fig. 4. Influence of micropolar parameter  over angular velocity profile  for different .

Fig. 5. Influence of micropolar parameter  over angular velocity profile  for different .

Fig. 6. Influence of micropolar parameter  over angular velocity profile  for different  with .

Fig. 7. Influence of micropolar parameter  over angular velocity profile  with .

Fig. 8. Influence of Prandtl numbers  over temperature profile  for different

Fig. 9. Influence of Reynolds numbers  over temperature profile  for different

Fig. 10. Influence of  and  over  against  for

Fig. 11. Influence of  and  over  against  for .

Fig. 12. Stream lines pattern for  in the  plane.

Fig. 13. Stream lines pattern for  in the  plane.

Table 1. Absolute values of the boundary derivatives corresponding to the behavior of shear stress at the surface of the cylinder for different values of the involved parameters when .

Table 2. Absolute values of the boundary derivatives of the angular velocity at the surface of the cylinder for different values of the involved parameters when .

Table 3. Behavior of heat flux at the surface of the cylinder for different values of the involved parameters when .

References

1. A. C. Eringen, Theory of micropolar fluid, J. Math. Mech. 16 (1966) 1-18.
2. H. Rosali, A. Ishak, I. Pop, Micropolar fluid flow towards a stretching/shrinking sheet in a porous medium with suction, Int. Commun. Heat Mass Tran. 39 (2012) 826-829.
3. H. A. Attia, Heat transfer in a stagnation point flow of a micropolar fluid over a stretching surface with heat generation/absorption, Tamkang J. Sci. Eng. 9 (4) (2006) 299-305.
4. R. Nazar, A. Ishak, I. Pop, Unsteady boundary layer flow over a stretching sheet in a micropolar fluid, Int. J. Eng. App. Sci. 4 (7) (2008) 406-410.
5. S. Nadeem, Abdul Rehman, K. Vajravelu, J. Lee, C. Lee, Axisymmetric stagnation flow of a micropolar nanofluid in a moving cylinder, Math. Prob. Eng. Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 378259, 17 pages, doi:10.1155/2012/378259.
6. S. Nadeem, N. S. Akbar, M. Y. Malik, Exact and numerical solutions of a micropolar fluid in a vertical Annulus, Num. Meth. Part. Diff. Equ. 26 (2010) 1660-1674.
7. A. Ishak, R. Nazar, I. Pop, Magnetohydrodynamic stagnation point flow towards a stretching vertical sheet in a micropolar fluid, Magnetohydrodynamics, 43 (1) (2007) 83-97.
8. A. Ishak, R. Nazar, I. Pop, Heat transfer over a stretching surface with variable surface heat flux in micropolar fluids, Phys. Lett. A, 372 (2008) 559-561.
9. S. Nadeem, M. Hussain, M. Naz, MHD Stagnation flow of a micropolar fluid through porous medium, Meccanica 45 (2010) 869-880.
10. S. Nadeem, S. Abbasbandy, M. Hussain, Series solutions of boundary layer flow of a Micropolar fluid near the stagnation point towards a shrinking sheet, Zeitschrift fur Naturforschung. 64a (2009) 575-582.
11. N. Bachok, A. Ishak, Flow and heat transfer over a stretching cylinder with prescribed surface heat flux, Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences 4 (2) (2010) 159-169.
12. T. G. Fang, J. Zhang, Y. F. Zhong, H. Tao, Unsteady viscous flow over an expanding stretching cylinder, Chin. Phys. Lett. 28 (12) (2011) 124707-1-4.
13. T. Fang, S. Yao, Viscous swirling flow over a stretching cylinder, Chin. Phys. Lett. 28 (11) (2011) 114702-1-4.
14. C. Y. Wang, Natural convection on a vertical stretching cylinder, Commun. Nonlinear Sci. Numer. Simulat, 17 (2012) 1098-1103.
15. B. J. Gireesha, B. Mahanthesh, P. T. Manjunatha, R. S. R. Gorla, Numerical solution for hydromagnetic boundary layer flow and heat transfer past a stretching surface embedded in non-Darcy porous medium with fluid-particle suspension, J. Nigerian Math. Society, doi:10.1016/j.jnnms.2015.07.003.
16. S. Mukhopadhyay, MHD boundary layer slip flow along a stretching cylinder, Ain Shams Eng. J.4(2) (2013) 317-324.
17. Abdul Rehman, S. Nadeem, Heat Transfer Analysis of the Boundary Layer Flow over a Vertical Exponentially Stretching Cylinder, Global J. Sci. Frontier Res. Math. Decision Sci. 13(11) (2013) 73-85.
18. Abdul Rehman, S. Nadeem, S. Iqbal, M. Y. Malik, M. Naseer, Nanoparticle effect over the boundary layer flow over an exponentially stretching cylinder, Proc IMechE Part N: J Nanoengineering and Nanosystems, (2014) 1-6.
19. M. Naseer, M. Y. Malik, Abdul Rehman, Numerical Study of Convective Heat Transfer on the Power Law Fluid over a Vertical Exponentially Stretching Cylinder, Applied and Comp.Math. 4(5) (2015) 346-350.
20. X. Si, Lin Li, L. Zheng, X. Zhang, B. Liu, The exterior unsteady viscous flow and heat transfer due to a porous expanding stretching cylinder, Computers & Fluids, 105(10) (2014) 280-284.
21. K. Vajravelu, K. V. Prasad, S. R. Santhi, Axisymmetric magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) flow and heat transfer at a non-isothermal stretching cylinder, App. Math. Comp.219(8) (2012) 3993-4005.
22. H. B. Keller, Numerical methods in boundary layer theory, Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 10 (1978) 417-433.
23. T. Cebeci, P. Bradshaw, Physical and Computational Aspects of Convective Heat Transfer, springer-Verlag, New York, 1984.
24. S. Nadeem, Abdul Rehman, M. Y. Malik, Boundary layer stagnation-point flow of third grade fluid over an exponentially stretching sheet, Braz. Soci. Che. Eng, in press.
25. M. E. Ali, Heat transfer characteristics of a continuous stretching surface, Warme und Stoubertagung 29 (1994) 227-234.