Hydromagnetic Jeffery-Hamel Unsteady Flow of a Dissipative Non-Newtonian Fluid with Nonlinear Viscosity

Abstract

The unsteady two-dimensional Jeffery-Hamel laminar flow of an incompressible non-Newtonian fluid, with nonlinear viscosity, flowing through a divergent wedge-shaped in the presence of a constant applied magnetic field in the direction perpendicular to the fluid motion has been studied. The resulting nonlinear PDEs (partial differential equations) governing this flow are reduced to a system of nonlinear ODEs (ordinary differential equations) by the similarity transformation technique. The resulting boundary value problem is solved numerically using the collocation method and simulated using M��������L�������� with the help of the bvp4c inbuilt function to obtain the profiles. The effects of varying the Reynolds number, Hartmann number, Prandtl number, Eckert number, and the unsteadiness parameter on the fluid velocity, fluid temperature, skin-friction coefficient, and rate of heat transfer are presented in graphs and tables; and are discussed. The results obtained indicate that there are significant effects of flow parameters on the flow variables. For instance, the effect of increasing viscous dissipation parameter (Eckert number) increases the fluid temperature which is significant in high-temperature processes such as polymer processing. This study provides useful information for engineering, technological, and industrial applications such as in hydromagnetic power generators.