The thin film flow of Al2O3 nanofluid particle over an unsteady stretching surface

Abstract

This work emphasizes the thermophysical properties of base fluid with different-shaped Al2O3 particles in the heat transfer of an unsteady thin film flow over a stretching layer. The study is performed under convective boundary conditions. A system of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) is formed through detailed mathematical modeling. Using an appropriate set of similarity transformations, PDEs’ system is transformed into a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODE). The system of ordinary differential equations is solved in MATLAB using BVP4C. The graphical simulations analyze the impact of multi-shape Al2O3 nanoparticles and other physically significant related parameters such as Prandtl, Eckert and biot-numbers on the flow and heat transfer characteristics. In addition, the coefficient of skin friction and Nusselt number are measured and tabulated numerically for discussion. The study shows that Al2O3 nanoparticles have a high flow and heat transfer rate in a platelet form. Moreover, the temperature profile increases by growing the volume-fraction parameter and the biot-number, but the reverse pattern is found only for the slip parameter. The study is in excellent agreement with existing literature for a limited number of cases.

Keywords

• Thin film
• Shape factor
• Convective boundary conditions
• Al2O3-nanofluid
• Heat transfer