Effects of slip on sheet-driven flow and heat transfer of a third grade fluid past a stretching sheet

The entrained flow and heat transfer of an electrically conducting non-Newtonian fluid due to a stretching surface subject to partial slip is considered. The partial slip is controlled by a dimensionless slip factor, which varies between zero (total adhesion) and infinity (full slip). The constitutive equation of the non-Newtonian fluid is modeled by that for a third grade fluid. The heat transfer analysis has been carried out for two heating processes, namely, (i) with prescribed surface temperature (PST case) and (ii) prescribed surface heat flux (PHF case). Suitable similarity transformations are used to reduce the resulting highly nonlinear partial differential equations into ordinary differential equations. The issue of paucity of boundary conditions is addressed and an effective second order numerical scheme has been adopted to solve the obtained differential equations. The important finding in this communication is the combined effects of the partial slip, magnetic field and the third grade fluid parameter on the velocity, skin-friction coefficient and the temperature field. It is interesting to find that slip decreases the momentum boundary layer thickness and increases the thermal boundary layer thickness, whereas the third grade fluid parameter has an opposite effect on the thermal and velocity boundary layers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.