MHD flow and heat transfer of Casson nanofluid over a wedge

Department of Mathematics, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500007 India

^a Corresponding author: madhumaccha@gmail.com

Received: 27 January 2016
Accepted: 28 April 2016

Abstract

Heat transfer characteristics of a steady, two dimensional, magnetohydrodynamic boundary layer flow of Casson nanofluid over a wedge have been investigated by incorporating the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The flux of volume fraction of nanoparticles is taken zero on the boundary. Using suitable similarity transformation, the governing partial differential equations for the modelling of boundary layer flow are reduced to ordinary differential equations. The resulting coupled non-linear ordinary differential equations are successfully solved numerically with the help of variational finite element method. To validate the present analysis the numerical results are compared with previously published work available in the literature and they found to be in good agreement. The effects of the flow controlling parameters on velocity, temperature and nanoparticle volume fraction profiles are investigated. The skin-friction co-efficient, Nusselt number and Sherwood number presented for several set of values of the physical parameters and salient features are analyzed.