Heat and mass transfer in MHD flow by perturbation technique

An analysis is performed to study the momentum, heat and mass transfer characteristics of MHD natural convection flow and heat generating fluid driven by a continuously moving permeable surface immersed in a fluid saturated porous medium. The nonlinear partial differential equations governing the problem under consideration have been transformed by a similarity transformation into a system of ordinary differential equations which is solved numerically by applying a perturbation technique. The solution is found to be dependent on several governing parameters, including the magnetic field strength parameter, Prandtl number, Darcy number, the dimensionless inertia coefficient, the dimensionless heat generation/absorption coefficient and the dimensionless suction/blowing coefficient. A parametric study of all the governing parameters is carried out and representative results are illustrated to reveal a typical tendency of the solutions. Representative results are presented for the velocity temperature distributions as well as the local friction coefficient and local Nusselt number. Favorable comparisons with previously published work confirm the correctness of the numerical results. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.