Onset of Rayleigh–Bénard MHD convection in a micropolar fluid

The present work is concerned with the effect of a uniform magnetic field on the onset of convection in an electrically conducting micropolar fluid. A flat fluid layer bounded by horizontal rigid boundaries, subjected to thermal boundary conditions of the Neumann type, is considered. The parallel flow approximation is used to predict analytically the critical Rayleigh number for the onset of convection. The onset of motion is found to depend on the Hartmann number Ha, materials parameters K, B, image, and the micro-rotation boundary condition n. A linear stability analysis is carried out to study numerically the onset of convection. The predictions of the analytical model are found to be in good agreement with the numerical solution. The above results are also compared with those obtained numerically for the case of a system subject to Dirichlet thermal boundary conditions.