Heat and mass transfer with free convection MHD flow past a vertical plate embedded in a porous medium

Abstract

An analysis to investigate the combined effects of heat and mass transfer on free convection unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of viscous fluid embedded in a porous medium is presented. The flow in the fluid is induced due to uniform motion of the plate. The dimensionless coupled linear partial differential equations are solved by using Laplace transform method. The solutions that have been obtained are expressed in simple forms in terms of elementary function exp(·) and complementary error function erfc(·). They satisfy the governing equations; all imposed initial and boundary conditions and can immediately be reduced to their limiting solutions. The influence of various embedded flow parameters such as the Hartmann number, permeability parameter, Grashof number, dimensionless time, Prandtl number, chemical reaction parameter, Schmidt number, and Soret number is analyzed graphically. Numerical solutions for skin friction, Nusselt number, and Sherwood number are also obtained in tabular forms. © 2013 Farhad Ali et al.