Mixed Convective Flow and Heat Transfer of a Dual Stratified Micropolar Fluid Induced by a Permeable Stretching/Shrinking Sheet

Abstract

The present study accentuates the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) flow and heat transfer characteristics of a dual stratified micropolar fluid over a permeable stretching/shrinking sheet. Thermal and solutal buoyancy forces are also included to incorporate with the stratification effect. Similarity, transformation is applied to reduce the governing model (partial differential equations) into a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) due to its complexity. Using bvp4c solver in the MATLAB software, numerical results for some limiting cases are in favorable agreement with the earlier published results. Both assisting and opposing buoyancy flows have dual similarity solutions within specific range of suction and stretching/shrinking parameters, whereas only a distinctive solution is observed for pure forced convective flow. The micropolar fluid shows a disparate pattern of flow, heat and mass transfer characteristics between stretching and shrinking cases. Unlike the shrinking flow, the surface velocity gradient, local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers for stretching flow intensify with the increment of the material parameter. The result from stability analysis reveals that the first solution is the real solution, whereas the second solution is virtual.