Effect of heat generation on natural convection from an impermeable inclined surface embedded in a porous medium

The paper investigates the effect of heat generation on natural convection boundary-layer flow over an arbitrarily inclined plate in a saturated porous medium. Heat is generated in porous medium with an exponential decaying function and wall temperature is a power function of the distance from the leading edge. Darcy-Boussinesq approximation is adopted to account for buoyancy force. Inclination parameter ? is used such that all cases of the horizontal, inclined, and vertical plates can be described by a single set of transformed boundary-layer equations. The nonlinear coupled parabolic partial differential equations have been solved numerically by using an implicit finite-difference scheme called the Keller box method. In addition, the similarity equations for the limiting cases of the horizontal and vertical plates are recovered by setting Ξ = 0 and Ξ = 1, respectively. Detailed results for skin friction coefficient and Nusselt number as well as for dimensionless velocity and temperature profiles are presented for both positive and negative inclinations of the plate. It is observed that heat generation changes the slope of dimensionless temperature and velocity profiles, and therefore in amount of Nusselt number and skin friction coefficient. In some cases, these changes also reverse direction of heat transfer. On the other hand, a comparison between numerical results and similarity solutions shows excellent agreement.