Abstract:
This thesis is concerned with the formation of boundary layer near a flat plate/wedge
placed in water-based nanofluids. In model development, partial slip assumption is
employed which results in the Robin–type condition in longitudinal velocity component.
The resulting heat transfer process with a prescribed surface temperature is also
formulated and analysed using thermal slip condition. In this thesis, two well-known
theoretical models namely (i) Tiwari and Das model and (ii) Buongiorno model are
applied. Firstly, buoyancy assisted or opposed Falkner-Skan flow over a heated static
wedge using Tiwari and Das model is formulated. Here, nanoparticle working fluid is
assumed to be water based and it contains different nanoparticle materials. The governing
problem is transformed in to a coupled self-similar boundary value problem whose
numerical solution is developed by MATLAB package based on the collocation
approach. Numerical simulations for velocity and temperature fields are scrutinized for
full ranges of solid volume fraction and pressure gradient parameter under both
assisting and opposing scenarios. A comparative analysis of wall shear and heat transfer
rate is conducted for different nanoparticle materials. The computational results clearly
demonstrate that nanofluid assumption is indeed vital for thermal conductivity
enhancement of convectional heat transfer fluids. Secondly, Buongiorno’s formulation is
invoked to model nanofluid transport phenomenon over a flat plate at zero incidence,
when a prescribed free stream velocity is considered. Here the unconventional condition
of nanoparticle mass flux is treated. Also, variation of diffusion coefficients with
temperature is retained and it is concluded that Brownian and thermophoresis diffusions
have no effects on the thermal heat transfer.
