Radiation effects on MHD free convection flow along vertical flat plate in presence of Joule heating and heat generation

In this paper, the effect of radiation on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) free convection flow along a vertical flat plate in presence of Joule heating and heat generation have been investigated. The governing equations associated with the conduction based boundary conditions are transformed into dimensionless form employing the appropriate transformations and then solved numerically using the implicit finite difference method with Keller box scheme. The numerical solutions are obtained in terms of velocity profiles, temperature distributions, skin friction coefficient and heat transfer rate and then presented graphically and discussed. A complete parametric analysis is done on these numerical results to show the effects of the magnetic parameter, radiation parameter, Joule heating parameter and heat generation parameter. It is found that radiation, Joule heating and heat generation play significant role on MHD natural convection flow during heat transfer. To illustrate the accuracy of the results, the present results for the local skin friction and surface temperature distribution excluding the effects of magnetic field parameter, radiation parameter, Joule heating parameter and heat generation parameter are compared with the results of Merkin and Pop designed for the fixed value of Prandtl number and an excellent agreement were found. (C) 2013 The authors, Published by Elsevier Ltd.