Similarity Solution of Flow, Heat and Mass Transfer of a Nanofluid Over a Porous Plate in a Darcy-Forchheimer Flow

Abstract

In this work, a similarity solution of the flow, heat and mass transfer of a nanofluid over a porous plate in a Darcy-Forchheimer flow is explored. The nanofluid model includes Brownian motion and Thermophoresis diffusion effects. The governing transport equations are made dimensionless using similarity transformation technique which reduce them into ordinary differential equations with the associated boundary conditions. The equations are then solved numerically using the classical fourth order Runge-Kutta method and the results are benched marked with available results in literature and are found to be in good agreement. The results for the flow velocity, the shear stress, the temperature distribution, the nanoparticle volume concentration, the skin friction coefficient, the reduced Nusselt number, and the reduced Sherwood number, are presented graphically illustrating the effects of permeability, inertia, thermophoresis, Brownian motion, Lewis number and Prandtl number on the flow. Our analysis shows, among others, that the Nusselt number is a decreasing function, while the Sherwood number is an increasing function of the thermophoretic number