A numerical study of the Dufour and Soret effects on unsteady natural convection flow past an isothermal vertical cylinder

Abstract

The Dufour and Soret effects on the unsteady laminar free convective flow with mass transfer flow past a semi-infinite isothermal vertical cylinder were studied numerically. The governing partial differential equations were converted into a non-dimensional form and solved numerically by applying a Crank-Nicolson type of implicit finite-difference method with a tri-diagonal matrix manipulation and an iterative procedure. For the hydrogen-air mixture, which is a non-chemical reacting fluid, the profiles of the unsteady dimensionless velocity, temperature and concentration are shown graphically for the different values of thermal and mass Grashof numbers, thermal diffusion parameters (Soret numbers) and diffusion-thermo parameters (Dufour numbers). Finally, the simulated values of the average skin-friction coefficient, the average Nusselt number and the average Sherwood number are presented. The numerical results reveal that for an increasing Soret number or decreasing Dufour number, the time to reach the temporal maximum and the steady-state decreases for the flow variables. As the Soret number increases or the Dufour number decreases, both the skin friction and the Sherwood number increase, whereas the Nusselt number decreases.