Axisymmetric flow and heat transfer of the Carreau fluid due to a radially stretching sheet: numerical study

The prime objective of this article is to study the axisymmetric flow and heat transfer of the Carreau fluid over a radially stretching sheet. The Carreau constitutive model is used to discuss the characteristics of both shear thinning and shear thickening fluids. The momentum equations for the two-dimensional flow field are first modeled for the Carreau fluid with the aid of the boundary layer approximations. The essential equations of the problem are reduced to a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations by using local similarity transformations. Numerical solutions of the governing differential equations are obtained for the velocity and temperature fields by using the fifth-order Runge–Kutta method along with the shooting technique. These solutions are obtained for various values of physical parameters. The results indicate substantial reduction of the flow velocity as well as the thermal boundary layer thickness for the shear-thinning fluid with an increase in the Weissenberg number, and the opposite behavior is noted for the shear-thickening fluid. Numerical results are validated by comparisons with already published results.