FLOW OF A NEWTONIAN FLUID IN A SYMMETRICALLY HEATED CHANNEL: EFFECT OF VISCOSITY AND VISCOUS DISSIPATION

This paper discusses the effect of viscosity and viscous dissipation (due to a high velocity gradient) on the steady flow of a viscous liquid in a symmetrically heated channel. The coupled nonlinear differential equations arising in the planar Poiseuille flow are not amendable to analytical solutions. Therefore, numerical solutions based on finite-difference scheme are presented. The effects of various flow controlling parameters such as temperature difference α , dimensionless pressure gradient, and the dimensionless viscous heating parameter δ on the dimensionless velocity and temperature are analyzed. The analysis reveals that when viscous heating parameter δ = 0 , we obtained zero solution for the dimensionless temperature.