MHD FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER FOR MAXWELL FLUID OVER AN EXPONENTIALLY STRETCHING SHEET WITH VARIABLE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY IN POROUS MEDIUM

An analysis is made to study magnetohydrodynamic flow and heat transfer for Maxwell fluid over an exponentially stretching sheet through a porous medium in the presence of non-uniform heat source/sink with variable thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity is assumed to vary as a linear function of temperature. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into ordinary differential equations using similarity transformations and then solved numerically using implicit finite difference scheme known as Keller-box method. The effect of the governing parameters on the flow field, skin friction coefficient, wall temperature gradient (in prescribed surface temperature case), wall temperature (in prescribed heat flux case) and Nusselt number are computed, analyzed and discussed through graphs and tables. The present results are found to be in excellent agreement with previously published work of El Aziz and Magyari and Keller on various special cases of the problem.