Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer on Unsteady Hiemenz Cu-Water and Ag-Water Nanofluid Flow over a Porous Wedge Due to Solar Radiation

Abstract

Nanoparticles are generally used to scatter and absorb solar radiations in nanofluid-based direct solar receivers to efficiently transport and store the heat. However, solar energy absorption in nanofluid can be enhanced by using differential materials and tuning nanofluid parameter. In this regard, theoretical investigations of unsteady homogeneous Hiemenz flow of an incompressible nanofluid having copper and silver nanoparticles over a porous wedge is carried out by using optimal homotopy asymptotic method (OHAM). Hence, a semi-analytical solver is applied to the transformed system to study the significance of magnetic field along with Prandtl number. In this work, impacts of conductive radiations, heat sink/source, unsteadiness, and flow parameters have been investigated for velocity and temperature profiles of copper and silver nanoparticles-based nanofluid. The effects of magnetic strength, volume fraction of nanoparticles, thermal conductivity, and flow parameters have also been studied on the considered nanofluids.

Keywords

• nanofluid
• Hiemenz flow
• optimal homotopy asymptotic method
• porous wedge sheet
• solar energy