Effects of Navier slip on unsteady flow of a reactive variable viscosity non-Newtonian fluid through a porous saturated medium with asymmetric convective boundary conditions

A study on the effects of Navier slip, in conjunction with other flow parameters, on unsteady flow of reactive variable viscosity third-grade fluid through a porous saturated medium with asymmetric convective boundary conditions is presented. The channel walls are assumed to be subjected to asymmetric convective heat exchange with the ambient, and exothermic chemical reactions take place within the flow system. The heat exchange with the ambient obeys Newton’s law of cooling. The coupled equations, arising from the law of conservation of momentum and the first law of thermodynamics, then the derived system are nondimensionalised and solved using a semi-implicit finite difference scheme. The lower wall slip parameter is observed to increase the fluid velocity profiles, whereas the upper wall slip parameter retards them because of backflow at the upper channel wall. Heat production in the fluid is seen to increase with the slip parameters. The wall shear stress increases with the slip parameters while the wall heat transfer rate is largely unaltered by the lower wall slip parameter but marginally increased by the upper wall slip parameter.