Peristaltic flow of a micropolar fluid through a porous medium in the presence of an external magnetic field

Abstract

This paper presents an analytical study of the MHD flow of a micropolar fluid through a porous medium induced by sinusoidal peristaltic waves traveling down the channel walls. Low Reynolds number and long wavelength approximations are applied to solve the non-linear problem in the closed form and expressions for axial velocity, pressure rise per wavelength, mechanical efficiency and stream function are obtained. The impacts of pertinent parameters on the aforementioned quantities are examined by plotting graphs on the basis of computational results. It is found that the pumping improves with Hartman number but degrades with permeability of the porous medium. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.