Effect of radiation on the flow and heat transfer over a wedge with variable viscosity

A boundary layer analysis is presented to investigate numerically the effect of radiation on flow of an optically dense viscous fluid and heat transfer over an isothermal wedge in this paper. The similar governing equations are obtained by using a suitable transformation and solved by Runge-Kutta method. Numerical results for the dimensionless velocity profiles, the dimensionless temperature profiles, the local friction coefficient and local Nusselt number are graphically presented for different values of the radiation parameter R-*, surface temperature parameter theta(w) and viscosity/temperature parameter theta(r). It is shown that increasing theta(r) and R-* tends to increasing the local Nusselt number and local friction coefficient. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.