NANOFLUID FLOW PAST A STRETCHING PERMEABLE FLAT PLATE WITH CONVECTIVE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

Abstract

A steady free convective laminar boundary layer flow arising from a linearly stretching of a porous flat surface in a nanofluid with convective boundary conditions has been investigated. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The resulting non-linear governing equations with associated boundary conditions are solved using the Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg algorithm with a local non-similar transformation. The influence of Brownian motion parameter (Nb), thermophoresis number (Nt), the Biot number (Bi), the Lewis number (Le) and the permeability parameter (fw) on the temperature and nanoparticle concentration profiles are shown graphically. The impact of physical parameters on the rate of heat and mass transfers are tabulated. A comparison is made with results available in literature and excellent validation of the present numerical method is achieved with earlier results for the local Nusselt number without taking the effect of Brownian motion and thermophoresis into consideration