Radiation effects on an unsteady mhd natural convective flow of a nanofluid past a vertical plate

Abstract

Numerical analysis is carried out on an unsteady MHD natural convective boundary layer flow of a nanofluid past an isothermal vertical plate in the presence of thermal radiation. The governing partial differential equations are solved numerically by an efficient, iterative, tri-diagonal, semi-implicit finite-difference method. In particular, the effects of radiation, magnetic field and nanoparticle volume fraction on the flow and heat transfer characteristics are investigated. The nanofluids containing nanoparticles of aluminum oxide, copper, titanium oxide, and silver with nanoparticle volume fraction range less than or equal to 0.04 are considered. The numerical results indicate that in the presence of radiation and magnetic field, an increase in the nanoparticle volume fraction will decrease the velocity boundary layer thickness while increasing the thickness of the thermal boundary layer. Meanwhile, an increase in the magnetic field or nanoparticle volume fraction decreases the average skin-friction at the plate. Excellent validation of the present results has been achieved with the published results in the literature in the absence of the nano-particle volume fraction.