TY - JOUR
TI - Unsteady free convection heat and mass transfer in a Walters-B viscoelastic flow past a semi-infinite vertical plate: A numerical study
AU - Prasad Vallampati R
AU - Vasu Buddakkagari
AU - Bég Osman Anwar
AU - Parshad D Rana
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2011
VL - 15
IS - 12
SP - 291
EP - 305
PT - Article
AB - A numerical solution for the free convective, unsteady, laminar convective  heat and mass transfer in a viscoelastic fluid along a semi-infinite vertical  plate is presented. The Walters-B liquid model is employed to simulate  medical creams and other rheological liquids encountered in biotechnology and  chemical engineering. This rheological model introduces supplementary terms  into the momentum conservation equation. The dimensionless unsteady, coupled  and non-linear partial differential conservation equations for the boundary  layer regime are solved by an efficient, accurate and unconditionally stable  finite difference scheme of the Crank-Nicolson type. The velocity,  temperature and concentration fields have been studied for the effect of  Prandtl number (Pr), viscoelasticity parameter (G), Schmidt number (Sc),  Buoyancy ration parameter (N). The local skin-friction, Nusselt number and  Sherwood number are also presented and analyzed graphically. It is observed  that, when the viscoelasticity parameter (G) increases, the velocity  increases close to the plate surface. An increase in Schmidt number is  observed to significantly decrease both velocity and concentration.