Effect of buoyancy forces on the flow and heat transfer over a continuous moving vertical or inclined surface

Abstract

An analysis is performed to study the effect of the buoyancy forces on the flow and heat transfer over a heated vertical or inclined surface which moves with non-uniform velocity in an ambient fluid. Both the constant wall and constant heat flux conditions are considered. The coupled non-linear partial differential equations governing the flow are solved using an implicit finite-difference scheme. It is found that, beyond a certain value of the buoyancy parameter, the skin friction vanishes at certain locations, but it does not imply separation since we are considering the flow over a moving surface. Also for large buoyancy parameter, the velocity of the fluid near the wall exceeds that on the wall. The Nusselt number increases with the buoyancy parameter, the Prandtl number and the stream-wise distance. The Nusselt number for the constant heat flux case is found to be higher than that of the constant wall temperature case.