Natural convection over a vertical isothermal plate in a non-Newtonian power-law fluid: New results

The natural convection along a vertical isothermal plate in a non-Newtonian power-law fluid is considered in this article. The problem has been treated in the past but only for the heat transfer case. The boundary layer equations are solved with the finite volume method. The problem is non-similar and is governed by the Prandtl number, the power-law index and the non-dimensional distance along the plate. Results are presented for non-dimensional distance up to 1000, Prandtl numbers from 1 up to 1000 and power-law index from 0.6 up to 1.5. Local Nusselt numbers, temperature profiles, skin friction and velocity profiles have been calculated and presented in tables and figures. The new results, combined with those existing in the literature, give a complete solution to this classical problem in the field of non-Newtonian power-law fluids.