MASS TRANSFER OVER AN EXPONENTIALLY STRETCHING POROUS SHEET EMBEDDED IN A STRATIFIED MEDIUM

Abstract

The boundary layer flow and mass transfer towards an exponentially stretching porous sheet embedded in a stratified medium is presented in this analysis. A first-order constructive/destructive chemical reaction is also considered. Similarity transformations were used to convert the partial differential equations corresponding to the momentum and concentration into highly nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Numerical solutions of these equations were obtained by the shooting method. Mass absorption at the surface was found in the case of a stratified medium, and it increased with an increase of stratification parameter. Due to increasing reaction rate parameter the concentration decreased. It is important to note that concentration overshoot was observed in the case of a stratified medium.

Keywords:

• Constructive/destructive chemical reaction
• Exponentially stretching sheet
• Mass transfer
• Similarity solutions
• Stratified medium
• Suction/blowing

Acknowledgments

The authors are very much thankful to the referees for their constructive comments and valuable suggestions, which led to definite improvement in the paper. Also, one of the authors (K. Bhattacharyya) gratefully acknowledges the financial support of National Board for Higher Mathematics (NBHM), DAE, Mumbai, India for pursuing this work.