Heat transfer in boundary layer flow of a micropolar fluid past a curved surface with suction and injection

Van Dyke's singular perturbation technique has been used to study the heat transfer in the flow of a micropolar fluid past a curved surface with suction and injection. The conditions for similar solutions of the thermal boundary layer equations have been obtained. In addition to the usual “no slip” condition for velocity, the two types of boundary conditions used for microrotation are: (i) no relative spin on the boundary; (ii) the anti-symmetric part of the stress tensor vanishes at the boundary. The effect of suction or injection on velocity, microrotation, temperature, skin friction coefficient, wall couple stress coefficient, displacement and momentum thicknesses, rate of heat transfer and adiabatic wall temperature have been studied. It is observed that with the increase of injection velocity, the thickness of the boundary layer is increased and the local drag is reduced. A comparison with the results obtained for a Newtonian fluid reveals that the microelements present in the fluid reduce the velocity and frictional drag, and cool the boundary.