Effect of Thermal Radiation on MHD Mixed Convective Heat Transfer Adjacent to a Vertical Continuously Stretching Sheet in the Presence of Variable Viscosity

An analysis is presented to study the combined free-forced convective laminar boundary layer flow adjacent to a vertical continuously stretching sheet in the presence of a magnetic field with variable viscosity and thermal radiation. The velocity and the temperature of the sheet were assumed to vary in a power law form, that is, u(w) = Bx(m) and T(w)(x) - T(infinity) = Ax(n). The governing equations for the problem were changed to dimensionless ordinary differential equations by using a similarity transformation. The transformed governing equations in the present study were solved numerically by using the Runge-Kutta and Shooting method. A comparison between the analytical and the numerical solutions has been included. The effects of the variable viscosity parameter, the mixed convection parameter G{*} = Fr(x)/Re(x)(2), the radiation parameter N and the magnetic field parameter M are discussed through graphs. Graphical results illustrating interesting features of the physics of the problem are presented and discussed.