At high temperature, radiation has significant effects on the flow field. These effects have substantial applications in many industrial areas, such as electrical power generation, solar power technology, and aerospace engineering.

There has been extensive research on the effects of radiation on fluid flow. The free convection flow in the presence of radiation has been previously studied by Ali et al. [1], Seddeek and Abdelmeguid [2], Raptis and Toki [3], and Malekzadeh et al. [4]. The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow in the presence of radiation has been investigated by Chamkha et al. [5], Raptis et al. [6], Duwairi [7], Ouaf [8], Abd-El Aziz [9], Pal and Mondal [10] and Shit and Haldar [11]. The flow through a porous medium in the presence of radiation has been studied by Murthy et al. [12], Al-Harbi [13], Al-Odat et al. [14], Raptis and Perdikis [15], Duwairi [16] and Badruddin et al. [17], and Awad et al. [18]. Raptis [19], Datti et al. [20], Abel et al. [21], Siddheshwar and Mahabaleswar [22] and Khan [23] have investigated the effects of radiation on the viscoelastic flow. The above studies, however, are under the assumption that the fluid is considered to be a thick gray fluid.

Bestman and Adiepong [24] studied the unsteady hydromagnetic free-convection flow with radiative heat transfer in a rotating thin gray fluid. The unsteady flow under the radiation effect of a thin gray fluid over a moving vertical plate was studied by Raptis and Perdikis [25]. Rajesh [26] studied the radiation effects of a thin gray fluid on MHD free convective flow near a vertical plate with ramped wall temperature under small magnetic Reynolds number. Rajput and Kumar [27] investigated the rotation and radiation effects on MHD flow of a thin gray fluid past an impulsively started vertical plate with variable temperature. Raptis [28] studied the free convective oscillatory flow and mass transfer past a porous plate in the presence of radiation of an optically thin fluid.

In the present study, we determine the effect of radiation on the flow field over a stretching plate of an optically thin gray fluid. We consider the fluid as viscous and incompressible, with temperature dependent viscosity.

The presented results are obtained after dimensionalization of the PDEs using a numerical approach. This approach is based on the finite volume (FV) discretization scheme. The discretization was performed with the use of a specialized symbolic package created in Mathematics.

We consider the flow of a viscous and incompressible fluid due to an isothermal stretching flat surface. The fluid properties are assumed to be isotropic and constant, except for the fluid dynamic viscosity. The x-axis is taken along the plate and the y-axis normal to it, as depicted in Figure 1. The radiation heat flux in the x-direction is considered negligible in comparison to that in the y-direction.

The equations governing the problem are given by:

Continuity equation

Momentum equation

Energy equation

where are the components of the velocity in the x and y directions respectively, is the fluid density, is the dynamic viscosity, T is the fluid temperature, k is the thermal conductivity, is the specific heat of the fluid under constant pressure and is the radiative heat flux.

The dynamic viscosity is assumed to be an inverse linear function of temperature [29].

or

where

is a constant, is the dynamic viscosity at infinity, is the kinematic viscosity at infinity, is a reference temperature, is the temperature at infinity, is a constant which in general is positive for liquids and

negative for gases.

The boundary conditions are defined as follows:

where is a constant and is the temperature of the stretching flat surface. In the case of an optically thin gray fluid the local radiant absorption is expressed as [8, 25,28],

where is the absorption coefficient and is the Stefan-Boltzman constant. We assume that the temperature differences within the flow are sufficiently small such that may be expressed as a linear function of the temperature. This is accomplished by expanding in a Taylor series about and neglecting higher-order terms, thus

Equation (8) through (9) takes the form:

Introducing the following transformations

where a prime denotes differentiation with respect to. In view of (10) and (11), Equation (1) is satisfied identically and Equations (2) and (3) reduce to

The boundary conditions (7) are transformed to

The non-linear system of coupled differential Equations (12) and (13) subject to the boundary conditions (14) has been solved following a symbolic approach. For this purpose we have used the Computer Algebra System (CAS) Mathematica [30].

The analysis begins by obtaining the discretized form of the system of equations by using a symbolic package developed for that purpose [31]. To discretize the coupled set of ordinary differential equations the finite volume method on a collocated grid is used [32]. Having obtained the discretized system, we construct the system of algebraic equations. Then the system is solved algebraically by Mathematica’s function Solve in respect to the grid values of the functions,. More details about the numerical approach can be found elsewhere [31]. Grid independence studies were performed to establish that the results are not grid dependent.

In the present study we numerically investigate the effect of radiation on the flow field over a stretching plate of an optically thin gray fluid, Figure 1. The fluid was considered viscous and incompressible. The viscosity was temperature dependent as shown in Equation (4). The results are presented in figures for the non-dimensional velocity, , and non-dimensional temperature, in respect to the temperature parameter, , radiation parameter, , and the Prantdl number,.

In Figure 2, the effect of the temperature parameter on the non-dimensional velocity, , when and is presented. Velocity decreases with the increase of the temperature parameter. Especially for, the velocity is substantially reduced leading to a thinner boundary layer (Figure 2, line 3).

The effect of the radiation parameter S (S: 0.1, 1, 7) on the non-dimensional velocity is shown in Figure 3, when Pr = 0.5 and. The velocity increases with the increase of the radiation parameter. This effect is more pronounced when the radiation parameter has larger values, as depicted in Figure 3.

The effect of the radiation parameter S (S: 0.1, 1, 7) on the non-dimensional temperature is shown in Figure 4, when Pr = 0.5 and. When the radiation parameter increases the temperature decreases, and this effect is more pronounced as the radiation parameter increases.

The effect of the Prandtl number, Pr, on the non-dimensional temperature is presented in Figure 5 for three different values of Prandtl (Pr: 0.5, 0.7, 1), when and S = 1. The increase of Prandtl number leads to a decrease of the temperature in the boundary layer.

Finally, Figures 6 and 7 show the effect of the temperature parameter on the non-dimensional velocity and temperature when Pr = 0.7, S = 1 and for

three different values of the temperature parameter. Temperature increases with the increase of the temperature parameter, (: –2, –0.05, –0.01). However, the effect of the temperature parameter is more pronounced on the non-dimensional velocity and it decreases as the parameter increases, Figure 6.

The numerical results of this study could bring new insight on the effect of thermal radiation on the flow past a stretching plate with temperature dependent viscosity. These results could be utilized in many industrial and practical areas, including glass and semiconductor processing, atmospheric flows with application to global climate change, electrical power generation, solar power technology, and aerospace engineering.

The effects of thermal radiation on the flow and temperature fields over a stretching plate of an optically thin gray fluid were numerical investigated. The fluid was considered incompressible with temperature dependent viscosity. The main findings of this study could be summarized in the following: (1) Increase of the radiation parameter increases the velocity profile but decreases the temperature profiles. (2) On the other hand, increase of the temperature parameter decreases the velocity profile and increases the temperature profile in the boundary layer. (3) Increase of Prandtl number decreases the temperature profile in the boundary layer.