A numerical study of free convection heat and mass transfer in a Rivlin–Ericksen viscoelastic flow past an impulsively started vertical plate with variable temperature and concentration

In this paper an analysis of the effect of viscoelasticity on the natural free convective unsteady laminar heat transfer fluid flowing past an impulsively started vertical plate with variable surface temperature and mass concentration. The Rivlin–Ericksen model is employed to simulate the rheological liquids encountered in cooling of electronic devices, polymer solutions, hydrocarbons and chemical engineering processes. The transport equations employed in the flow are governed by a coupled non-linear system of partial differential equations and include the five parameters. viz. G_r (the thermal Grashof number), G_m (the solutal Grashof number), Γ (viscoelastic parameter), P_r (the fluid Prandtl number) and S_c (the Schmidt number). The transformed two-point boundary value problem is solved numerically using the Gauss-Seidel process of the finite element method subjected to appropriate boundary conditions. Numerical …