Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of thermal relaxation time on the mixed convection flow of non-Newtonian micropolar fluid over a continuously stretching sheet of variable thickness in the presence of transverse magnetic field. An innovative and modified form of Fourier's law, namely, Cattaneo-Christov heat flux is employed in the energy equation to study the characteristics of thermal relaxation time. The governing equations are transformed into ODE, using similarity transformations. Fourth order Runge-Kutta numerical method is used to solve these equations. The effects of relevant parameters such as a micro-rotation parameter, magnetic parameter, thermal relaxation parameter, Prandtl number, surface thickness parameter, and mixed convection parameter, on the physical quantities are graphically presented. Results illustrate that fluid temperature enhances with the rise of thermal relaxation parameter, but it reduces with an increase in micro-rotation parameter. The skin friction decreases with a rise in micro-rotation and micro-element parameters. However, variation in the rate of heat transfer is quite significant for small values of thermal relaxation parameter.