Viscous dissipation effect on natural convection flow along a vertical wavy surface

This paper investigates the influence of viscous dissipation on natural convection flow of viscous incompressible fluid along a uniformly heated vertical wavy surface. The governing boundary layer equations are transformed into dimensionless non-similar equations by using set of suitable transformations and solved numerically by the finite difference method along with Newton's linearization approximation. Results for the details of the surface shear stress in terms of the local skin friction coefficient, the rate of heat transfer in terms of the local Nusselt number, the streamlines and the isotherms are shown graphically in figures along the wavy surface for different values of the set of parameters entering into the problem. It is observed that the viscous dissipation parameter N and amplitude-to-length ratio of wavy surface have accelerating effect on the velocity and temperature of the flow field. Both N and retards the heat transfer rate. The effect of viscous dissipation parameter N is to enhance the skin friction coefficient while amplitude-to-length ratio of wavy surface reverses the effect. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.