Pulsating flow of a couple stress fluid in a channel with permeable walls

The paper is concerned with an analytical study of the oscillatory flow of a couple stress fluid in a channel, bounded by two permeable walls. The couple stress fluid is considered to be injected into the medium through one of the walls with a given velocity and to be sucked off by the other wall with an equal velocity. The problem is solved by using a perturbation technique. Analytical expressions for the velocity and volumetric flow rate are derived for the oscillatory flow of the couple stress fluid flowing in the channel. By using the method of parametric variation, distribution of the velocity of the couple stress fluid, change in velocity profiles at different instants of time, change in volumetric flow rate with change in frequency and cross-flow Reynolds number are computed, by considering an illustrative example. The study reveals that both the velocity and the volumetric flow rate are quite sensitive to the couple stress parameter, the frequency of oscillation and also to the cross-flow Reynolds number. The study will be immensely useful in resolving different problems associated with oil industries.