Flow and heat transfer of MHD non-Newtonian power-law fluids due to rotating disk

In flows over rotating disk, substantial additional flow phenomena arise due to the rotational forces or due to the nature of the three-dimensional boundary layer flows. The resulting flow characteristics can be very complex and almost every rotating system reveals novel and unexpected flow characteristics over a sufficiently wide range of variables which affect the hydrodynamic phenomena. This paper focuses on the flow and heat transfer in non-Newtonian power law fluids due to a rotating disk in the presence of magnetic field. The number of independent variables in the highly non-linear partial differential equations was reduced by suitable similarity transformations. The coupled non-linear ordinary differential equations were solved numerically using the finite difference collocation method of MATLAB bvp4c. The effects of the magnetic parameter and Prandtl number on the flow fields and heat transfer rate were investigated for the cases of shear thinning and shear thickening power law fluids. The heat transfer rate reduces as the magnetic field strength increases but increases as the Prandtl number increases for both types of shear thickening and shear thinning fluids. The effects are more significant in the case for shear thinning fluids. (paper)