Stagnation Point Flow through a Porous Medium towards a Radially Stretching Sheet in the Presence of Uniform Suction or Injection and Heat Generation

Abstract

An analysis is made of the steady laminar axisymmetric stagnation point flow of an incompressible viscous fluid in a porous medium impinging on a permeable radially stretching sheet with heat generation or absorption. A uniform suction or blowing is applied normal to the plate which is maintained at a constant temperature. Similarity transformation is used to transform the governing partial differential equations to ordinary differential equations. The finite difference method and generalized Thomas algorithm are used to solve the governing nonlinear momentum and energy equations. The effects of the uniform suction/blowing velocity, the stretching parameter and the heat generation/absorption coefficient on both the flow field and heat transfer are presented and discussed. The results indicate that increasing the stretching parameter or the suction/blowing velocity decreases both the velocity and thermal boundary layer thicknesses. The effect of the stretching parameter on the velocity components is more apparent for suction than blowing while its effect on the temperature and rate of heat transfer at the wall is clearer in the case of blowing than suction.