Steady flow and heat transfer of the power-law fluid over a rotating disk

This paper deals with the steady flow and heat transfer of a viscous incompressible power-law fluid over a rotating infinite disk. Assumed the thermal conductivity follows the same function as the viscosity, the governing equations in the boundary layer are transformed into a set of ordinary differential equations by generalized Karman similarity transformation. The corresponding nonlinear two-point boundary value problem was solved by multi-shooting method. Numerical results indicated that the parameters of power-law index and Prandtl number have significant effects on velocity and temperature fields. The thickness of the boundary layer decays with power-law index. The peak of the radial velocity changes slightly with power- law index. The values near the boundary are affected dramatically by the thickness of the boundary layer. With the increasing of the Prandtl number the heat conducts more strongly. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.