Effects of slip on sheet-driven flow and heat transfer of a non-Newtonian fluid past a stretching sheet

The flow and heat transfer of an electrically conducting non-Newtonian fluid due to a stretching surface subject to partial slip is considered. The constitutive equation of the non-Newtonian fluid is modeled by that for a third grade fluid. The heat transfer analysis has been carried out for two heating processes, namely, (i) with prescribed surface temperature (PST-case) and (ii) prescribed surface heat flux (PHFcase) in presence of a uniform heat source or sink. Suitable similarity transformations are used to reduce the resulting highly nonlinear partial differential equations into ordinary differential equations. The issue of paucity of boundary conditions is addressed and an effective second order numerical scheme has been adopted to solve the obtained differential equations. The important finding in this communication is the combined effects of the partial slip, magnetic field, heat source (sink) parameter and the third grade fluid parameters on the velocity, skin friction coefficient and the temperature field. It is interesting to find that slip decreases the momentum boundary layer thickness and increases the thermal boundary layer thickness, whereas the third grade fluid parameter has an opposite effect on the thermal and velocity boundary layers. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.