Natural convection of non-Newtonian nanofluid flow between two vertical parallel plates

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to carry out a detailed investigation to study the natural convection of a non-Newtonian nanofluid flow between two vertical parallel plates. In this study, sodium alginate has been taken as a base fluid and nanoparticles that added to it are copper and silver. Maxwell–Garnetts and Brinkman models are used to calculate the effective thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluid, respectively.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used two methods in this study, namely, Galerkin’s method and homotopy perturbation method.

Findings

This paper investigates the velocity and temperature profile of nanofluid and the real fluid flow between two vertical parallel plates. The impacts of physical parameters such as nanofluid volume fraction and dimensionless non-Newtonian viscosity are discussed.

Originality/value

Coupled non-linear differential equations are solved for velocity and temperature. A model is proposed in such a way that the authors may get the solution of real fluid from the nanofluid by neglecting the nano term. The authors do not require a further calculation for real fluid problem.

Citation

Biswal, U., Chakraverty, S. and Ojha, B.K. (2019), "Natural convection of non-Newtonian nanofluid flow between two vertical parallel plates", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 29 No. 6, pp. 1984-2008. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-06-2018-0302