Effect of thermal radiation on MHD flow of blood and heat transfer in a permeable capillary in stretching motion

Abstract

In this paper, a theoretical analysis is presented for magnetohydrodynamic flow of blood in a capillary, its lumen being porous and wall permeable. The unsteadiness in the flow and temperature fields is caused by the time-dependence of the stretching velocity and the surface temperature. Thermal radiation, velocity slip and thermal slip conditions are taken into account. In order to study the flow field as well as the temperature field, the problem is formulated as a boundary value problem consisting of a system of nonlinear coupled partial differential equations. The problem is analysed by using similarity transformation and boundary layer approximation. Solution of the problem is achieved by developing a suitable numerical method and using high speed computers. Computational results for the variation in velocity, temperature, skin-friction co-efficient and Nusselt number are presented in graphical/tabular form. Effects of different parameters are adequately discussed. Since the study takes care of thermal radiation in blood flow, the results reported here are likely to have an important bearing on the therapeutic procedure of hyperthermia, particularly in understanding/regulating blood flow and heat transfer in capillaries. © 2013 The Author(s).