Mixed Convection Flow of Nanofluids over a Vertical Surface Embedded in a Porous Medium with Temperature Dependent Viscosity

摘要

A boundary layer analysis is presented for the mixed convection past a vertical plate in a porous medium saturated with a nanofluid in the presence of variable viscosity effect. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into a set of similar equations and solved numerically by an efficient, implicit, iterative, finite-difference method. A parametric study illustrating the influence of various physical parameters is performed. Numerical results for the velocity, temperature, and nanoparticles volume fraction profiles, as well as the friction factor, surface heat and mass transfer rates have been presented for parametric variations of the mixed convection parameter λ, the variable viscosity parameter θ_e, the buoyancy ratio parameter Nr, the Brownian motion parameter Nb, the thermophoresis parameter Nt, and the Lewis number Le. The dependency of the friction factor, surface heat transfer rate, and mass transfer rate on these parameters has been discussed.