International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
Volume 2006 (2006), Article ID 28042, 10 pages
doi:10.1155/IJMMS/2006/28042

Effect of magnetic field on thermal instability of a rotating Rivlin-Ericksen viscoelastic fluid

Pardeep Kumar, Hari Mohan, and Roshan Lal

Department of Mathematics, International Centre for Distance Education and Open Learning (ICDEOL), Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla 171005, India

Received 22 February 2005; Revised 6 September 2005; Accepted 23 October 2005

Copyright © 2006 Pardeep Kumar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The thermal instability of a rotating Rivlin-Ericksen viscoelastic fluid in the presence of uniform vertical magnetic field is considered. For the case of stationary convection, Rivlin-Ericksen viscoelastic fluid behaves like a Newtonian fluid. It is found that rotation has a stabilizing effect, whereas the magnetic field has both stabilizing and destabilizing effects. Graphs have been plotted by giving numerical values to the parameters, to depict the stability characteristics. The rotation and magnetic field are found to introduce oscillatory modes in the system which were nonexistent in their absence.