International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)

Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

Unsteady MHD Natural Convective Flow over Vertical

Plate in Thermally Stratified Media with Variable
Viscosity and Thermal Conductivity

D. Iranian P. Loganathan P. Ganesan

Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics
Panimalar Institute of Technology College of Engineering, Guindy College of Engineering, Guindy
Chennai, India Chennai, India Chennai, India

ABSTRACT Cf skin- friction coefficient

The effects of exponentially varying viscosity and linearly Cf average skin-friction coefficient
varying thermal conductivity on unsteady MHD natural
convective flow past a semi infinite vertical plate in a Greek Symbols
thermally stratified medium is studied. The variables of both γ thermal conductivity variation parameter
viscosity and thermal conductivity are considered only a
function of temperature. The governing boundary layer λ viscosity variation parameter
equations of continuity, momentum and energy have been
μ fluid viscosity
transformed into dimensionless coupled and nonlinear
equations and after that solved by implicit finite-difference μ∞ fluid viscosity in free stream
method of Crank-Nicolson type. The effects of the varying
viscosity, thermal conductivity and stratification parameter at θ dimensionless temperature
various times are discussed with velocity and temperature β volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion
profiles and additionally the skin-friction and the rate of heat
transfer. ν kinematic viscosity

Keywords ρ the fluid density

Unsteady, vertical plate, variable viscosity, thermal σ electrical conductivity of the fluid
conductivity, thermal stratification.
Subscripts
1. NOMENCLATURE w condition of the wall
u, v velocity of the fluid in x, y directions respectively free stream condition
∞
U, V dimensionless velocity of the fluid in X, Y directions
respectively 2. INTRODUCTION
Free convection flows are of great interest in a number of
Gr Grashof number industrial applications, for example, geothermal frameworks,
Cp specific heat at constant temperature fiber and granular insulation etc. Buoyancy is also of
importance in an environment where differences between land
k thermal conductivity of the fluid and air temperatures can give rise to complicated flow
patterns. Heat transfer on fluid flow due to free convection in
M magnetic parameter the presence of magnetic field finds subsidiary applications in
B0 magnetic induction different branches of Science and Technology such as atomic
science, fire engineering, computational astrophysics, the
t′ time magnetic behavior of plasmas in fusion reactors, liquid-metal
cooling of nuclear reactors and electromagnetic casting. The
t dimensionless time
problem of free convection flow past an infinite vertical plate
L characteristic length of the plate under different plate conditions was studied by numerous
researchers. Soundalgekar [1] studied the free convection
T temperature of the fluid in the boundary layer effects on the Stokes problem for an infinite vertical plate by
Tw plate temperature using Laplace transform method. Hellums and Churchill [2]
were the first to present unsteady natural convective flow past
T∞ temperature of the fluid far away from the plate a semi-infinite isothermal vertical plate by using an explicit
S dimensionless stratified parameter finite-difference scheme. As explicit finite-difference scheme
has its own particular lacks, later, Soundalgekar and Ganesan
Pr Prandtl number [3] have solved free convection flow past a vertical plate with
mass transfer using implicit finite difference method of
Nux dimensionless local heat transfer rate Crank-Nicolson type which is unconditionally stable and
Nu dimensionless average Nusselt number convergent.

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

Magnetohydrodynamics has attracted the attention of a large with variation of viscosity and thermal conductivity over an
number of scholars due to its diverse applications. The study isothermal semi-infinite vertical plate.
of effects of magnetic field on free convection flow is
important in liquid-metals, electrolytes and ionized gases. 3. MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS
Soundalgekar and Mohammed Ali [4] have studied free A two dimensional unsteady flow of a viscous incompressible
convection effects on MHD flow past an impulsively started stratified fluid past a semi-infinite vertical plate is considered.
infinite vertical isothermal plate. Seddeek [5] reviewed the The x- axis is taken along the plate in the vertically upward
free convection effects with variable viscosity in an aligned direction and the y-axis is chosen normal to the plate as
magnetic field. Elbashbeshy [6] studied free convection flow shown in Figure 1. The gravitational acceleration g is acting
with variable viscosity and thermal diffusivity along a vertical downward. Initially, the plate and the fluid are at the same
plate in the presence of magnetic field, in which the modified temperature T . At time t  0 , the temperature of the plate is
fourth order Runge-Kutta integration scheme was used along
with Nachtsheim-Swigert shooting technique. The above suddenly raised to Tw and maintained at the same value. A
problems were not done in the thermally stratified media. magnetic field is applied transverse to the direction of the
For many fluid flows of practical importance in nature and flow. The variable viscosity and thermal conductivity are
also in numerous engineering contrivances, the environment involved and the viscous dissipation is negligible in the fluid
is thermally stratified. In the situation of thermal stratification flow. It is assumed that the viscosity of the fluid is an
takes place, the fluid temperature and convection exist in such exponential function and that the thermal conductivity is a
environment like oceans, lakes, solar ponds, nuclear reactors linear function of the temperature. All the fluid physical
where coolant is present in magnetic field etc. The properties are assumed to be constant except for the body
consideration of researchers on the convective heat transfer in force terms.
thermal stratified fluid has a consequential topic for scientific
enquiry of both theoretical and applied fields. Deka and Neog
[7] studied unsteady natural convection flow past an
accelerated vertical plate in a thermally stratified fluid.
Kulkarni et al. [8] presented the similarity solutions for
natural convection flow over an isothermal vertical wall
immersed in thermally stratified medium. Gurminder Singh et
al. [9] examined the impacts of thermally stratified ambient
fluid on MHD convective along a moving non-isothermal
vertical plate using Runge-Kutta fourth order method along
with shooting technique. The natural convection flow from a
continuously moving vertical surface immersed in thermally
stratified medium is presented by Takhar et al. [10]. In case of
vertical plate problems thermal stratification arises mainly
because of temperature variations of different density. The
natural convection flow with combined effects due to thermal
and mass diffusion in thermally stratified media was studied
by Saha and Hossain [11], in which the authors used sixth
order implicit Runge-Kutta-Butcher technique.
Fig 1: Physical model of the problem
In many transport processes in nature and in modern Under these assumptions, the governing boundary layer
applications, the heat transfer with variable viscosity is a
equations of continuity, momentum and energy with
consequence of buoyancy effect caused by the diffusion of Boussinesq’s approximation are as follows
heat. Hazarika and Sarma [12] concentrated on to get the
effects of variable viscosity and thermal conductivity on u u
steady free heat and mass transfer flow along a vertical plate  0 (1)
in the presence of a magnetic field. Mahanti and Gaur [13] x v
studied the effects of varying viscosity and thermal
conductivity on steady free convective flow and heat transfer
u u u 1   u  2
 B0 u
along an isothermal vertical plate in the presence of heat sink. u v      g  (T  T, x )  (2)
Gnaneswara Reddy and Bhaskar Reddy [14] studied unsteady t x y  y y 
MHD convective heat and mass transfer past a semi-infinite
vertical porous plate with variable viscosity and thermal
conductivity using the shooting method. Thakur and Hazarika T T T 1   T 
u v  k  (3)
[15] studied the effects of variable viscosity and thermal t x y Cp y y
conductivity on unsteady free convective heat and mass
transfer MHD flow of micropolar fluid with constant heat flux
through a porous medium. The initial and boundary conditions are

From all these analysis, it is identified that the variation of t  0, u  0, v  0, T  T , x for all x and y
viscosity and thermal conductivity with temperature is an
interesting area in the stratified fluid flow problems. Most of t  0, u  0, v  0, T  Tw at y  0
(4)
the above problems dealt with two-dimensional steady MHD u  0, v  0, T  T ,0 at x  0
boundary layer flow. Hence the focus of the present paper is
on unsteady MHD free convective thermally stratified flow u  0, T  T , x at y  

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

Introducing the following non dimensional quantities the values of V are calculated explicitly at every nodal point on a
particular i level at (n + 1)th time level. In a similar manner,
14 1 2 1 4 2 2 1 2
x yGr uLGr vLGr  B0 L Gr computations are carried out by moving along i direction. After
X ,Y  ,U  ,V ,M  computing values corresponding to each i at (n + 1)th time level, the
L L   
(5) values at the next time level are resolute in a similar manner.
Tw  T , x t Gr
12
 C p g L
3 Computations are completed until the steady-state is reached. The
 , t  2
, Pr  , Gr  2
(Tw  T ,0 ) steady-state solution is assumed to have been reached, when the
Tw  T ,0 L k  absolute difference between the values of U, as well as
temperature θ at two consecutive time steps are less than 10-5 at
The variations of the normalized viscosity and thermal all grid points.
conductivity parameters are composed in the form (Elbashbeshy
and Ibrahim [16], Elbarbary and Elgazery [17]): The finite difference scheme is proved to be unconditionally stable,
for a natural convective flow, using Von-Neumann technique. The
 ( ) /   exp (  ) (6) local truncation error is O(Δt' 2+ΔY2+ΔX) and it tends to zero as
Δt', ΔY, and ΔX tend to zero, which demonstrates that the scheme
k ( ) / k  1   (7) is compatible. Hence compatibility and stability ensure the
implicit finite difference scheme is convergent.
By introducing the above non dimensional quantities and the
parameters (6, 7) in equations (1), (2) and (3), they are reduced 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
to the non-dimensional form as follows The computations of dimensionless velocity, temperature
profiles have been carried out for different values of the
U V parameters. The velocity and temperature profiles obtained in a
 0 (8)
X Y
dimensionless form are presented in Figures (2-8) for Pr = 0.73
(air) and Pr = 7.0 (water). Figure 2 represents the velocity profile
for different values of S and for the fixed values of λ= - 0.6,
U U U   2U U   γ = 1.0 and M = 0. It is clear from the Figure that the time to
 exp (  )    MU
U V
 Y 2   Y
(9)
 t X Y  Y  reach steady state decreases gradually with the increase of
thermal stratification parameter S. The velocity increases with
time until a temporal maximum (U = 0.53922) is reached and
   1   2   2  after there is a reduction can be seen until the steady state is
U  US  V  (1 )     (10)
Y 2  Y  
reached. Figure 3 depicts the velocity profile for different values
 t X Y Pr 
of magnetic parameter M. It is observed from the figure that the
We obtain the boundary condition for temperature at the wall velocity decreases as M increases with time increasing and
in non-dimensional form as follows reaches temporal maximum and then decrease to reach steady
state value. The Figures 4 and 5 represent the velocity profile for
Tw  T , x T , x  T ,0 Prandtl number (=7.0) for water. The velocity profile is
   1 . Since T ,x is a demonstrated in Figure 4 for different values of S. It shows that
Tw  T ,0 Tw  T ,0 the velocity decreases as S increases. The velocity reaches
temporal maximum at (U= 0.92015) and decreases
1 dT , x monotonically to reach steady state. The steady state velocity
linear function,   1 X  1  SX , where can be seen from Figure 5 for different values of thermal
T0 dX
conductivity parameter γ, magnetic parameter M and for some
1 d T , x fixed values of S = 0, λ = 0.5. The velocity decreases as
T0  Tw  T ,0 and S  . decreasing the value of γ but increasing the value of M.
T0 dX

The corresponding initial and boundary conditions of (4) are

t   0 : U  0, V  0,   0 for all X and Y
t   0 : U  0, V  0,   1  SX at Y  0
(11)
U  0, V  0,   0 at X 0
U  0,   0 as Y  

4. NUMERICAL TECHNIQUE
The governing equations (8-10) are unsteady, coupled and non-
linear with initial and boundary conditions (11). Using implicit
finite-difference scheme of Crank-Nicolson type, the governing
equations are solved as described (Thomas algorithm) in Carnahan
et. al [18]. The region of integration for the present problem is
considered as a rectangle composed of the lines indicating Xmax = 1
and Ymax = 15, where Ymax corresponds to Y = ∞, which lies well
outside both the momentum and energy boundary layers. At a Fig 2: Steady state velocity for different values of S
particular time level n, finite difference equations at every internal (* Temporal maximum)
nodal point on a particular i-level constitutes a tridiagonal system of
equations and thus the values of U and θ are known at every nodal
point on a particular i level at (n + 1)th time level and determinately,

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Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

The impact of the stratified parameter on the temperature

profiles is shown in Figure 6. It shows that the temperature
profiles for air. The temperature profile decreases as the
stratified parameter increases with decreasing time for some
fixed values of λ, γ and M. It can be seen that the values of the
non-dimensional temperature are positive in case of absence
of the thermal stratification parameter (S = 0), while S = 0.1,
0.2, 0.4, 0.5, the non-dimensional temperature are negative
within the boundary layer, because at these values of S, the
difference between the surface of the plate and ambient
temperatures at X = 1 is zero. It shows that greater cooling of
the surface with an increase in S results in a decrease in the
temperature. It is due to the fact that an increase in the values
of the thermal stratification parameter has the propensity to
increase the thermal buoyancy effect. It takes more time to
reach the steady state when S is diminutive.

Fig 3: Steady state velocity profiles for different values of M

(* Temporal maximum)

Fig 6: Steady state temperature profiles for different

values of S
Figure 7 shows that, increasing the values of λ, γ and M
produces increasing temperature gradients near the wall.
Moreover, extreme cases of large values of the same
parameters and some fixed values of S show, far steeper
Fig 4: Steady state velocity profiles for different values of S temperature profiles. Figure 8 represents that the temperature
(*Temporal maximum) decreases as the stratified parameter increases with increasing
time for water.

Fig 7: Steady state temperature profiles for different

Fig 5: Steady state velocity profiles for different values of values of λ, γ and M
γ and M

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Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

independent of time. When time increases, the average heat

transfer increases and after some fluctuations, and reaches the
asymptotic steady state. It is to be noted that the average heat
transfer rate increases as the stratification parameter S increases
for both air and water. It is also observed that a decrease in the
Prandtl value, leads to an increase in the average heat transfer
rate.

Fig 8: Steady state temperature profiles for different values

of S
Knowing the velocity and temperature field, it is standard to
study the physical quantities of fundamental interest of the skin-
friction, the rate of heat transfer in steady state conditions. The
dimensionless local and additionally average values of the skin-
friction and Nusselt number can be expressed as

 U 
C f  exp (  )   (11) Fig 9: Local Skin friction
 Y Y 0
1  U 
C f  exp (  )    dX (12)
0  Y Y 0

  
N u X   1    G r
1
 
4 (13)
 Y Y 0
1   
N u   1    G r
1
4
  dX (14)
0  Y Y 0

The derivations involved in equations (11) and (12) are

evaluated using five point formula and integrals are evaluated
using Newton cotes formula numerically and from these
equations, the local and average skin frictions are calculated.
Figure 9 demonstrates that the local skin friction for different
values of S and Prandtl numbers of air and water. It is observed Fig 10: Local Nusselt number for different values of
from the figure that local skin friction decrease as increase in the λ, γ and M
stratification parameter S for both air and water. This is because,
the velocity of the fluid decreases by increasing the stratification
parameter as depicted in Figure 2. Therefore, there is a reduction
in the shear stress along the wall and hence a decrease in the skin
friction. It is additionally observed that an increase in Prandtl
value, local skin friction is found to increase. The local and
average heat transfer rates are calculated from the equations (13)
and (14) respectively. Figures 10 and 11 represent the
dimensionless steady state local heat transfer rate for air and
water. From Figure 10, it is observed that the local heat transfer
rate decreases as increasing the values of λ, γ and M. Similarly,
Figure 11 depicts the local heat transfer rate decreases as the
thermal stratification decreases. Figure 12 shows that the
average skin friction for water. It is observed from the figure that
the average skin friction decreases for decreasing thermal
conductivity parameter γ but increasing magnetic parameter M.
This is because, the velocity of the fluid decreases by increasing
the stratification parameter as shown from Figure 4. Figure 13
represents the average heat transfer rate for air and water. It Fig 11: Local Nusselt number for different values of S
decreases sharply at small values of time t, being unaffected by
the stratification parameter S, but at large values of t, it is

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

increases as the stratification parameter S increases for both

air and water.
The present study may be established in various scientific
aspects.

7. REFERENCES
[1] Soundalgekar, V. M. 1977. Free convection effects on
the Stokes problem for an infinite vertical plate, Trans.
ASME J. Heat transfer, Vol. 99, pp. 499-50.
[2] Hellums, J. D. and Churchill, S. W. 1962. Transient and
steady state and natural convection”, Numerical solution:
Part 1, The isothermal vertical plate, American Institute
of Chemical Engineers Journal, Vol. 8, pp. 690-692.
[3] Soundalgekar, V. M. and Ganesan, P. 1981. Finite
difference analysis of transient free convection with mass
transfer of an isothermal vertical flat plate, International
Journal of Engineering Science, Vol. 19, pp. 757-770.
Fig 12: Average Skin friction for different values of
[4] Soundalgekar, V. M. and Mohammed Abdulla Ali. 1986.
γ and M Free convection effects on MHD flow past an
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[8] Kulkarni, A. K.., Jacobs, H. R., and Hwang, J. J. 1986.
Similarity solutions for natural convection flow over an
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6. CONCLUSIONS 2010. Effect of thermally stratified ambient fluid on
In this study, the problem of unsteady MHD natural MHD convective along a moving non-isothermal vertical
convection flow over a semi-infinite vertical plate, in a plate, International Journal of Physical Sciences, 5(3),
thermally stratified media with variable viscosity and thermal pp. 208-215.
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difference method of the Crank-Nicolson type. This study [10] Takhar, H. S., Chamkha, A. J., and Nath, G. 2001.
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both air and water. The local heat transfer rate decreases on [12] Hazarika, G. C., and Sarma, U. 2011. Effects of variable
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increasing M for water. The average heat transfer rate 106.

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Volume 121 – No.3, July 2015

[13] Mahanti, N. C., and Gaur, P. 2009. The effects of a porous medium, International Journal of Computer
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