Abstract:
Rotating flow occurring over a stationary or a rotating disk has immense theoretical and practical
significance. Such flows are vital in different applications including aerodynamics where these
are involved in the design of rotating machineries such as turbines, propellers and compressors.
Rotating flows are also met in chemical and food processing industries, in electrochemistry and
in the flow between a rotor and stator. Motivated by such applications, the thesis aims at
discussing two different interesting types of rotating flow problems namely: (i) the Bödewadt
flow around a stretchable surface and (ii) the boundary layer flow beneath generalized vortex,
where the tangential velocity at the far field follows a power law form i.e. 𝑢థ ~𝑟 where 𝑟 is the
radial coordinate and 𝑚 shows the power law index. Two distinct viscosity-temperature relations
are applied to analyse solid flow configurations. However, an exponential viscosity-temperature
correlation, established on an empirical result, is the main emphasis of present thesis. A set of
transformations is employed to convert the Navier-stokes equations into boundary value
problems comprising ordinary differential equations. An easy to apply yet reliable package
bvp4c MATLAB is used to obtain computational results for wide range of Prandtl number.
Graphical illustrations are obtained to enlighten the behavior of variable fluid properties on the
considered flow situations. In case of variable fluid properties, computational data for the
viscous drag exhibited at the surface of disk and the rate of heat transfer are substantially
different from those found for the case of constant fluid properties. Present numerical findings
are in perfect agreement with that of a previous study conducted with constant physical
properties.
