Influence of transport properties on the peristaltic MHD Jeffrey fluid flow through a porous asymmetric tapered channel

•The magnetic parameter causes a reduction in the fluid velocity as well as pressure rise in the augmented pumping region.•The pressure rise and fictional forces behave in opposite ways for all the parameters studied.•Higher values of variable viscosity are found to have an increasing effect on the axial fluid velocity in the channel’s central part.•As the medium becomes less porous, the fluid velocity is found to increases along with the temperature.•An increase in Brinkmann number and variable thermal conductivity coefficient leads to a rise in the temperature profiles.•The bolus size is observed to increase with increasing non-uniformity and Jeffrey parameters. The current work intends to investigate the magneto-hydrodynamic peristaltic flow of a non-Newtonian fluid through a tapered asymmetric channel. The transport of fluid with variable transport properties (viscosity and thermal conductivity) takes place through a porous medium. The problem is formulated under the basic assumptions of long wavelength and low Reynolds number. The perturbation technique has been implemented to yield the solution for momentum and energy equations. The pumping characteristics such as pressure rise and frictional force have been evaluated by Weddles rule using MATLAB software. The solutions which are graphed indicate that the variable viscosity plays a major role in regulating the fluid velocity in the central part of the channel. Also, as the channel becomes more divergent, the size of the bolus trapped in the peristaltic motion is found to increase.