Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications 10 (2009) 29092913

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Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nonrwa

Heat transfer over an unsteady stretching permeable surface with

prescribed wall temperature
Anuar Ishak a , Roslinda Nazar a, , Ioan Pop b
a

School of Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cluj, R-3400 Cluj, CP 253, Romania

article

info

Article history:
Received 18 November 2007
Accepted 26 September 2008
Keywords:
Unsteady flow
Heat transfer
Similarity solutions
Stretching permeable surface

a b s t r a c t
The unsteady laminar boundary layer flow over a continuously stretching permeable
surface is investigated. The unsteadiness in the flow and temperature fields is caused by
the time-dependence of the stretching velocity and the surface temperature. Effects of
the unsteadiness parameter, suction/injection parameter and Prandtl number on the heat
transfer characteristics are thoroughly examined.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Fluid dynamics due to a stretching surface is important since it has many practical applications in manufacturing
processes which include both metal and polymer sheets, for example the cooling of an infinite metallic plate in a cooling
bath, the boundary layer along material handling conveyers, the aerodynamic extrusion of plastic sheets, the boundary layer
along a liquid film in the condensation processes, paper production, glass blowing, metal spinning and drawing of plastic
films. The quality of the final product depends on the rate of heat transfer at the stretching surface. Since the pioneering
study by Crane [1], who presented an exact analytical solution for the steady two-dimensional flow due to a stretching
surface in a quiescent fluid, many authors have considered various aspects of this problem and obtained similarity solutions
(cf. [215]).
All of the above mentioned studies deal with stretching surfaces where the flows were assumed to be steady. Unsteady
flows due to stretching surfaces have received less attention; a few of them are those considered by Devi et al. [16], Andersson
et al. [17], Nazar et al. [18], and very recently by Ali and Mehmood [19]. In Refs. [18] and [19], the similarity transformation
introduced by Williams and Rhyne [20] was used, which transforms the governing partial differential equations with three
independent variables to two independent variables, which are more convenient for numerical computations.
Motivated by the above investigations, in this paper we present the characteristics of the heat transfer caused by a
stretching permeable surface. The governing partial differential equations with three independent variables are transformed
to ordinary differential equations using the similarity transformation, before being solved numerically by the Keller-box
method. The results obtained are then compared with those of Grubka and Bobba [3], Ali [5] and the exact solution for the
steady-state flow case to support their validity.
2. Analysis
Consider the unsteady laminar boundary layer flow due to a stretching permeable surface in a quiescent viscous and
incompressible fluid, as shown in Fig. 1. At time t = 0, the sheet is impulsively stretched with the velocity Uw (x, t ) along

Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 3 8921 3371; fax: +60 3 8925 4519.
E-mail address: rmn72my@yahoo.com (R. Nazar).

1468-1218/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.nonrwa.2008.09.010

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A. Ishak et al. / Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications 10 (2009) 29092913

Fig. 1. Physical model and coordinate system.

the x-axis, keeping the origin fixed in the fluid of ambient temperature T . The stationary Cartesian coordinate system has
its origin located at the leading edge of the sheet with the positive x-axis extending along the sheet, while the y-axis is
measured normal to the surface of the sheet. Under these assumptions along with the boundary layer approximations and
neglecting the viscous dissipation, the governing unsteady two-dimensional NavierStokes equations and energy equation
may be written as

u v
+
= 0,
x
y

(1)

u
u
u
2u
+u
+v
= 2,
t
x
y
y

(2)

T
T
T
2T
+u
+v
= 2,
t
x
y
y

(3)

subject to the boundary conditions

u = Uw ,

v = Vw ,

T = Tw

at y = 0,

u 0,

T T as y ,
(4)
where u and v are the velocity components in the x and y directions, respectively, T is the fluid temperature inside
the boundary layer, t is time, and are the thermal diffusivity and the kinematic viscosity, respectively, and Vw =
( Uw /x)1/2 f (0) represents the mass transfer at the surface with Vw > 0 for injection and Vw < 0 for suction. We assume
that the stretching velocity Uw (x, t ) and the surface temperature Tw (x, t ) are of the form
Uw (x, t ) =

ax
1 ct

Tw (x, t ) = T +

bx
1 ct

(5)

where a, b and c are constants with a > 0, b 0 and c 0 (with ct < 1), and both a and c have dimension time1 . It should
be noticed that at t = 0 (initial motion), Eqs. (1)(3) describe the steady flow over a stretching surface. This particular form
of Uw (x, t ) and Tw (x, t ) has been chosen in order to be able to devise a new similarity transformation, which transforms
the governing partial differential equations (1)(3) into a set of ordinary differential equations, thereby facilitating the
exploration of the effects of the controlling parameters (see Andersson et al. [17]).
We now introduce the following dimensionless functions f and , and similarity variable (see Ishak et al. [9,10], Devi
et al. [16] and Andersson et al. [17]):

1/2

T T
y,
= ( xUw )1/2 f (),
() =
,
(6)
x
Tw T
where (x, y, t ) is a stream function defined as u = / y and v = / x, which identically satisfies the mass

Uw

conservation equation (1). Substituting (6) into Eqs. (2) and (3) we obtain
f

000

00

+ ff f

02

A f + f
0

00

= 0,



1 00
1 0
0
0
+ f f A + = 0,

Pr

(7)

(8)

where primes denote differentiation with respect to , A = c /a is a parameter that measures the unsteadiness and Pr = /
is the Prandtl number. The boundary conditions (4) now become
f (0) = f0 ,
f () 0,
0

f 0 (0) = 1,

(0) = 1,

() 0 as ,

where f (0) = f0 , with f0 < 0 and f0 > 0 corresponding to injection and suction, respectively.

(9)

A. Ishak et al. / Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications 10 (2009) 29092913

2911

The quantities of physical interest are the skin friction coefficient Cf and the local Nusselt number Nux , which are defined
as
Cf =

w
,
Uw2 /2

Nux =

xqw
k(Tw T )

(10)

where is the fluid density, and the wall shear stress w and the surface heat flux qw are given by

w =

u
y


qw = k

y =0

T
y

(11)

y=0

with and k being the dynamic viscosity and thermal conductivity, respectively. Using the dimensionless quantities (6), we
obtain
1
2

Cf Re1x /2 = f 00 (0),

Nux /Re1x /2 = 0 (0).

(12)

We note that for A = 0, the problem under consideration reduces to a steady-state flow, where the closed-form solution
for the flow field and the solution for the thermal field in terms of Kummers functions are respectively given by
f () =

() =

1
e
,

(13)

M (Pr 1, Pr + 1, Pr e / 2 )
M (Pr + 1, Pr 1, Pr / 2 )

(14)

where f0 = 1/ (with > 0), and 0 < < 1 and > 1 correspond to injection and suction, respectively. In Eq. (14),
M (a, b, z ) denotes the confluent hypergeometric function (see Abramowitz and Stegun [21]), with
M (a, b, z ) = 1 +

X
an z n
,
b n!
n=1 n

an = a(a + 1)(a + 2) (a + n 1),

bn = b(b + 1)(b + 2) (b + n 1).
By using Eqs. (13) and (14), the skin friction coefficient f 00 (0) and the local Nusselt number 0 (0) can be shown to be
given by
f 00 (0) = ,

0 (0) = Pr +

Pr 1 Pr

M (Pr , Pr + 2, Pr / 2 )

Pr + 1 M (Pr 1, Pr + 1, Pr / 2 )

(15)

Moreover, when Pr = 1, the solution () given in (14) can be expressed as () = f 0 () = e , which implies

0 (0) = .

(16)

3. Results and discussion

The ordinary differential equations (7)(9) have been solved numerically by means of a finite-difference scheme known as
the Keller-box method, as described in the book by Cebeci and Bradshaw [22]. The results are given to carry out a parametric
study showing the influence of the non-dimensional parameters, namely the unsteadiness parameter A, suction/injection
parameter and Prandtl number Pr. For validation of the numerical method used in this study, the case when A = 0 (steadystate flow) has also been considered and compared with the results reported by Grubka and Bobba [3] and Ali [5], as well as
the analytical solution given by Eq. (15). The quantitative comparison is shown in Table 1 and it is found to be in very good
agreement.
The temperature profiles presented in Fig. 2 show that the temperature gradient at the surface increases as A increases,
thus the heat transfer rate at the surface increases with A. The same phenomenon is observed for the variation of () with
when Pr = 1 and A = 0.5, as can be seen in Fig. 3. This figure shows that the heat transfer rate at the surface is higher
for suction ( > 1) compared to injection ( < 1). This is due to the fact that the surface shear stress increases when
introducing suction, which in turn increases the local Nusselt number. From Eqs. (7)(9), it is clear that the velocity profile
is identical to the temperature profile, i.e. f 0 () = (), when Pr = 1. Thus, Figs. 2 and 3 also represent the velocity profiles
for selected values of A and .
In many practical applications, the characteristics involved, such as the heat transfer rate at the surface are vital since
they influence the quality of the final products. Fig. 4 shows the temperature profiles for various values of Pr when the other
parameters are fixed. It is evident from this figure that the temperature gradient at the surface increases as Pr increases,

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A. Ishak et al. / Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications 10 (2009) 29092913

Table 1
Values of 0 (0) for various values of A, and Pr.
A

Pr

0.5

0.72
1
10
0.01
0.72
1
3
10
0.72
1
10
1

0.5
1
2

Grubka and Bobba [3]

0.0197
0.8086
1.0000
1.9237
3.7207

Ali [5]

0.8058
0.9961
1.9144
3.7006

Exact solutions (Eq. (15))

Present results

0.4570268328
0.5000000000
0.645161289
0.01970635421
0.8086313498
1.000000000
1.923682594
3.720673901
1.494368413
2.000000000
16.08421885

0.4570
0.5000
0.6452
0.0197
0.8086
1.0000
1.9237
3.7207
1.4944
2.0000
16.0842
0.8095
1.3205
2.2224

Fig. 2. Temperature profiles () for different values of A when Pr = 1 and = 2 (suction).

Fig. 3. Temperature profiles () for various values of when Pr = 1 and A = 0.5.

which implies an increase of the heat transfer rate at the surface. This is because a higher Prandtl number fluid has a relatively
low thermal conductivity, which reduces conduction, and thereby reduces the thermal boundary layer thickness, and as a
consequence increases the heat transfer rate at the surface (see Char [6]).
Finally, the sample of temperature profiles presented in Figs. 24 show that the boundary conditions (9) are satisfied,
thus supporting the numerical results obtained.
4. Conclusions
We have theoretically studied the similarity solutions of the unsteady boundary layer flow and heat transfer due to a
stretching permeable surface. A new similarity solution has been devised, which transform the time-dependent governing
equations to ordinary differential equations. We discussed the effects of the governing parameters A, and Pr on the fluid

A. Ishak et al. / Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications 10 (2009) 29092913

2913

Fig. 4. Temperature profiles () for various values of Pr when A = 1 and = 2.

flow and heat transfer characteristics. The numerical results here compared very well with previously reported cases, as
well as the exact solution for the steady-state flow. We found that the heat transfer rate at the surface 0 (0) increases
with A, and Pr.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial supports received in the form of research grants from the Academy
of Sciences Malaysia (SAGA project code: STGL-013-2006) and the Engineering Mathematics Group, Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia (project code: UKM-GUP-BTT-07-25-174).
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