Unsteady viscous flow over a rotating stretchable disk with deceleration

In this work, the laminar unsteady flow over a stretchable rotating disk with deceleration is investigated. The three dimensional Navier–Stokes (NS) equations are reduced into a similarity ordinary differential equation group, which is solved numerically using a shooting method. Mathematically, two solution branches are found for the similarity equations. The lower solution branch may not be physically feasible due to a negative velocity in the circumferential direction. For the physically feasible solution branch, namely the upper solution branch, the fluid behavior is greatly influenced by the disk stretching parameter and the unsteadiness parameter. With disk stretching, the disk can be friction free in both the radial and the circumferential directions, depending on the values of the controlling parameters. The results provide an exact solution to the whole unsteady NS equations with new nonlinear phenomena and multiple solution branches.

► Exact solutions to three-dimensional unsteady Navier–Stokes equations. ► Solutions are given by similarity equations, which are solved numerically. ► Two solution branches obtained for a decelerating rotating stretchable disk. ► Flow velocities are controlled by the unsteadiness and stretching parameters.