Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2013) 128: 158
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2013-13158-1

Regular Article

Unsteady MHD three-dimensional flow with viscous dissipation and Joule heating

¹ Department of Mathematics, Quaid-I-Azam University, 44000, Islamabad, Pakistan
² Nonlinear Analysis and Applied Mathematics (NAAM) Research Group, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80203, 21589, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

^* e-mail: hfarooq99@yahoo.com

Received: 27 July 2013
Accepted: 27 November 2013
Published online: 19 December 2013

Abstract

This article addresses the viscous dissipation and Joule heating effects in unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) three-dimensional flow forced by an exponentially stretching surface. The momentum and thermal equations in the boundary layer regime are reduced into the ordinary differential equations using appropriate transformations. Computations for series solutions of velocity and temperature are first made and then analyzed with respect to influential parameters. Numerical values of skin friction coefficients and local Nusselt number are given and examined. The present results are also found to be in very good agreement with the existing aymptotic solutions.