Mixed convection boundary layer flow along vertical thin needles in nanofluids

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to theoretically study the problem of mixed convection boundary layer flow and heat transfer past a vertical needle with variable wall temperature using nanofluids. The similarity equations are solved numerically for copper nanoparticles in the based fluid of water to investigate the effect of the solid volume fraction parameter of the fluid and heat transfer characteristics. The skin friction coefficient, Nusselt number, and the velocity and temperature profiles and are graphically presented and discussed. Design/methodology/approach – The transformed system of ordinary differential equations was solved using the function bvp4c from Matlab. The relative tolerance was set to 1e-10. For the study of the stability the authors also used the bvp4c function in combination with chebfun package from Matlab. Findings – It is found that the solid volume fraction affects the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics. The numerical results for a regular fluid and forced convection flow are compared with the corresponding results reported by Chen and Smith. The solutions exists up to a critical value of λ, beyond which the boundary layer separates from the surface and the solution based upon the boundary-layer approximations is not possible Originality/value – The paper describes how multiple (dual) solutions for the flow reversals are obtained. A stability analysis for this flow reversal has been also done showing that the lower solution branches are unstable, while the upper solution branches are stable.