Effects of a transverse flows with variable viscosity in micropolar fluids

Abstract

A regular perturbation analysis is presented for three laminar natural convection flows in micropolar fluids in liquids with temperature dependent viscosity: a freely-rising plane plume, the flow above a horizontal line source on an adiabatic surface (a plane wall plume) and the flow adjacent to a vertical uniform flux surface. While these flows have well-known power-low similarity solutions when the fluid viscosity is taken to be constant, they are non-similar when the viscosity is considered to a function of temperature. A single similar flow, that adjacent to a vertical isothermal surface, is also analysed for comparison in order to estimate the extent of validity of perturbation analysis. The formulation used here provides a unified treatment of variable viscosity effects on those four flows. Computed first-order perturbation quantities are presented for all four flows. Numerical results for velocity, angular velocity and thermal functions has been shown graphically or tabulated for different values of micropolar parameters.