Finite Element Analysis of Nonlinear Flow Problems of Nanofluids

Abstract

The study of heat and mass transport of nanofluids is of great practical importance due to its impact on many branches of science and engineering. Nanofluids are novel fluids newlinecharacterized by the presence of nanosized particles (1-100 nm) dispersed within a base fluid. Distinctive characteristics of nanofluids make them potentially useful in various applications in heat and mass transfer. Nanoparticles are of great scientific interest as they effectively act as bridge between atomic or molecular structures and bulk materials and has been the field of very active research for the last few decades. Many fluids are available in real life on the basis of relationship between shear stress and rate of strain, which are classified as Newtonian and non- newlineNewtonian. Thus, it is important to study Newtonian and non-Newtonian nanofluid flow newlinecharacteristics as they have wide applications in engineering, biomedicines and industrial processes. In the present research work, the numerical study of two dimensional, steady, incompressible, laminar boundary layer flow problems of nanofluid in the presence of magnetic field, thermal radiation and chemical reaction under different boundary conditions in various geometries such as flat plate, nonlinear stretching sheet, wedge and channel has been newlineundertaken. The underlying governing equations for these problems are nonlinear differential equations which often have no solution or it is extremely difficult to obtain the solution analytically. Therefore, to solve such problems, finite element method (FEM) is utilized employing linear, quadratic and Hermite interpolation polynomials. newlineThe governing equations for the nanofluid flow problems are first transformed into a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations using similarity transformations and are then solved numerically to obtain the results. To ensure the accuracy of the current work, it has been validated against previous studies for specific cases of the problem.