Abstract
This paper discusses the effects of a vertical a.c. electric field and heat transfer on a peristaltic flow of an incompressible dielectric viscoelastic fluid in a symmetric flexible channel. The mathematical modeling includes interactions among the electric field, flow field, and temperature. The perturbation solution of the modeled problem is derived by considering a small wave number. The influence of pertinent parameters is demonstrated and discussed. The numerical results show that the possibility of flow reversal increases near the lower bound of the channel and decreases near the upper bound of the channel as the electrical Rayleigh number, the Reynolds number, and the Weissenberg number increase, whereas the opposite effect is observed as the temperature parameter and the Weissenberg number increase. It is observed that the size of the trapped bolus decreases at the upper bound of the channel and increases at the lower bound of the channel with increasing electrical Rayleigh number, whereas the opposite effect is observed as the temperature parameter increases. The results also show that the trapped bolus in the case of an Oldroydian fluid is smaller than that for a Newtonian fluid.