Effects of slip, viscous dissipation and Joule heating on the MHD flow and heat transfer of a second grade fluid past a radially stretching sheet

The flow and heat transfer of an electrically conducting non-Newtonian second grade fluid due to a radially stretching surface with partial slip is considered. The partial slip is controlled by a dimensionless slip factor, which varies between zero (total adhesion) and infinity (full slip). Suitable similarity transformations are used to reduce the resulting highly nonlinear partial differential equations into ordinary differential equations. The issue of paucity of boundary conditions is addressed and an effective numerical scheme is adopted to solve the obtained differential equations even without augmenting any extra boundary conditions. The important findings in this communication are the combined effects of the partial slip, magnetic interaction parameter and the second grade fluid parameter on the velocity and temperature fields. It is interesting to find that the slip increases the momentum and thermal boundary layer thickness. As the slip increases in magnitude, permitting more fluid to slip past the sheet, the skin friction coefficient decreases in magnitude and approaches zero for higher values of the slip parameter, i.e., the fluid behaves as though it were inviscid. The presence of a magnetic field has also substantial effects on velocity and temperature fields.