Copyright © 2012 Reza Hosseini et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The flow of an incompressible electrically conducting viscous fluid in convergent or divergent channels under the influence of an externally applied homogeneous magnetic field is studied both analytically and numerically. Navier-Stokes equations of fluid mechanics and Maxwell’s electromagnetism equations are reduced into highly non-linear ordinary differential equation. The resulting non-linear equation has been solved analytically using a very efficient technique, namely, differential transform method (DTM). The DTM solution is compared with the results obtained by a numerical method (shooting method, coupled with fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme). The plots have revealed the physical characteristics of flow by changing angles of the channel, Hartmann and Reynolds numbers.