Abstract. The article is focused on the effects of Soret and chemical reaction on MHD free convection flow through a vertical porous surface in the presence of heat source, viscous dissipation and radiation. The dimensionless governing equations for this investigation are solved analytically using perturbation technique. Numerical evaluation of the numerical results is performed and the results for velocity, temperature and concentration profiles within the boundary layer are discussed and shown graphically. Also skin-friction coefficient due to velocity, Nusselt number coefficient due to temperature and Sherwood number coefficient due to concentration fields are evaluated.Keywords: Boundary layer; MHD; Radiation; Viscous dissipation; Chemical reaction; Permeability of porous; Heat source.
IntroductionOwing to their numerous applications in the industrial manufacturing process, the problem of heat and mass transfer in the boundary layers of a continuously moving semi-infinite flat plate has attracted the attention of researchers for the past three decades. Some of the application areas are hot rolling, study production, metal spinning, drawing plastic films, glass blowing, continuous casting of metals and spinning of fibers. Annealing and thinning of copper wire is another example. In all these cases, the quality of the final product depends on the rate of heat and mass transfer at the moving surface. By drawing the strips in an electrically conducting fluid subjected to a magnetic field the rate of cooling can be controlled and the final products of the desired characteristic might be achieved. Sakiadis [1] studied the boundary layer of viscous fluid on the continuous moving solid surface. Gribben [2] investigated the MHD boundary layer flow over a semi-infinite plate with an aligned magnetic field in the presence of pressure gradient. Free convection boundary layers and the study on a uniformly heated vertical plate was presented by Goldstein and Eckert [3]. Beard and Walters [4] proposed the two-dimensional boundary layer flow for an elastico-viscous fluid near a stagnation point. In the present years, the free convective flow of heat and mass transfer problems in the presence of magnetic field through a porous medium have attracted the attention of a number of research scholars because of their possible application in many branches of science and technology such as fibre and granular insulation, a geothermal system, etc. In engineering sciences, it finds many applications in MHD pumps, MHD bearing, MHD power generators, etc. The effects of free convection on stokes problem for a vertical plate under the action of transversely applied magnetic field with heat and mass transfer was discussed by Soundalgekar et al. [5]. Thermal diffusion and natural convection between inclined plates in a porous medium with MHD was analyzed by Raju et al. [6]. Ahmed [7] discovered the radiating fluid and an induced magnetic field over a porous vertical plate. Samira et al. [8] derived free convection MHD flow of an elastovisco...