Unsteady Viscous Flow Past an Impulsively Started Porous Vertical Surface with Variable Viscosity Fluid in the Presence of Viscous Dissipation: BSRM Approach

Abstract

This paper presents a new numerical approach for solving unsteady two dimensional boundary layer flow past an infinite vertical porous surface with the flow generated by Newtonian heating and impulsive motion in the presence of viscous dissipation and temperature dependent viscosity. The viscosity of the fluid under investigation is assumed to vary linearly with temperature. The flow model is described in terms of a highly coupled and nonlinear system of partial differential equations. The proposed method of solution seeks to decouple the original system of PDEs to form a sequence of equations that can be solved in a computationally efficient manner. A novel approach that applies spectral collocation independently in all underlying independent variables is executed to obtain approximate solutions of the problem. A parametric study of selected parameters is conducted and results for the velocity and temperature are illustrated graphically and physical aspects of the problem are discussed and compared.

Keywords: Free convection, BSRM, Variable viscosity, viscous dissipation, Newtonian heating