FORCED CONVECTIVE FLOW OVER A FLAT-PLATE IN NON-NEWTONIAN POWER LAW FLUIDS

A new forced convection parameter [GRAPHICS] is proposed to study the effect of the generalized Prandtl number on the Nusselt number for a power law fluid flow over a flat plate for both cases of uniform surface temperature or uniform surface heat flux conditions. The generalized Prandtl number ranging from an extremely small value to very large is acted as the streamwise coordinate parameter which specifies the position from the leading edge to the downstream distance for n < 1 and the position reversed for n > 1. An implicit weighting function scheme with a cubic spline interpolation method is employed to solve the transformed nonsimilar boundary-layer equations. The results for the local Nusselt number, local skin friction coefficient and temperature and velocity profiles are illustrated for flow indices from 0.1 to 2.0 and generalized Prandtl numbers from 10(-3) to 10(3).