Abstract:
This thesis describes boundary layer formations near a stretching cylinder placed in a shearthinning
fluid. An important Carreau fluid model is adopted to account for shear-thinning effects
in the flow field. The thesis aims at discovering the significance of shear-thinning characteristic
in the flow and thermal fields. Firstly, heat flow near an axially stretching cylinder immersed in
Carreau fluid is formulated. Previous studies concerning Carreau fluid flow driven by a stretching
cylinder are discussed with a view to point out some crucial errors concerning mathematical
modeling. For computational results, a widely employed MATLAB package bvp4c is utilized,
which is based on a collocation scheme. New numerical results of the resulting six parameter
problem are worked out, which are utilized to assess the contribution of surface curvature on the
flow fields in the presence of shear-thinning effect. In addition, plots of wall shear rates are
elucidated for varying choices of parameters. Secondly, Mathematical modeling of flow around a
stagnation-point on a vertical stretching cylinder is placed in a shear-thinning fluid is investigated.
Buoyant force term arising due to the vertical boundary is formulated under the well-known
Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation. Numerical results are acquired using shooting technique via
5th order Runge-Kutta integration approach and additionally MATLAB built-in function bvp4c is
applied to attest the solutions. Graphical illustrations are included to predict the contribution of
buoyant force term on the underlying flow characteristics in the existence of non-Newtonian effect.
