Copyright © 2010 Mostafa Mahmoud and Shimaa Waheed. 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

A theoretical analysis is performed to study the flow and heat transfer characteristics of magnetohydrodynamic mixed convection flow of a micropolar fluid past a stretching surface with slip velocity at the surface and heat generation (absorption). The transformed equations solved numerically using the Chebyshev spectral method. Numerical results for the velocity, the angular velocity, and the temperature for various values of different parameters are illustrated graphically. Also, the effects of various parameters on the local skin-friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number are given in tabular form and discussed. The results show that the mixed convection parameter has the effect of enhancing both the velocity and the local Nusselt number and suppressing both the local skin-friction coefficient and the temperature. It is found that local skin-friction coefficient increases while the local Nusselt number decreases as the magnetic parameter increases. The results show also that increasing the heat generation parameter leads to a rise in both the velocity and the temperature and a fall in the local skin-friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number. Furthermore, it is shown that the local skin-friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number decrease when the slip parameter increases.