Transient Boundary Layer Laminar Free Convective Flow of a Nanofluid Over a Vertical Cone/Plate

Abstract

Two-dimensional transient hydrodynamic boundary layer flow of incompressible Newtonian nanofluid past a cone and plate with constant boundary conditions is investigated numerically. The Newtonian nanofluid model incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. In order to solve the transformed unsteady, nonlinear coupled boundary layer equations numerically under the conditions, an implicit finite difference scheme of Crank–Nicolson type has been employed. Numerical results obtained for the velocity, temperature and nanoparticle concentration distributions, as well as the skin friction, local Nusselt number and local Sherwood number for several values of the parameters, namely the buoyancy ratio parameter, Prandtl number, Lewis number and nanofluid parameters. The dependency of the thermophysical properties has been discussed on these parameters. The results shown that the Brownian motion parameter increased, the local skin friction decreased while the local Nusselt number and local Sherwood number increased. However, they both decreased as the thermophoresis parameter increased. The approach used in optimizing the transient boundary layer heat transfer of nanofluid problems. The use of nanoparticles improve the heat transfer performance of the base fluids having poor thermophysical properties which are not able to meet the cooling rate of modern engineering equipments.