Free convective heat transfer of MHD Cu-kerosene nanofluid over a cone with temperature dependent viscosity

Abstract

Nanofluids are potential heat transfer fluids with enhanced thermal and physical properties can be applied in many areas. External magnetic field have tendency to set the thermal and physical properties of nanofluids. With this motivation, we investigated the effects of temperature dependent viscosity, heat source/sink and viscous dissipation on natural convective heat transfer of radiative magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) non-Newtonian nanofluid caused by a cone. For this study, a simulation is performed by mixing of copper nanoparticles in the kerosene. The self similar transformed governing equations are solved by enforcing Runge-Kutta based shooting technique. We acquire the significant accuracy of the recent results by comparing with the published results. In addition, it is indicated that the dual solutions exist for both the base fluid and nanofluid cases. The effects of dimensionless parameters including Eckert number, Weissenberg number, Power-law index, viscous variation parameter, heat source/sink, thermal radiation parameter, and magnetic field parameter on velocity and temperature fields along with the friction factor coefficient and the local Nusselt number are discussed with the help of graphs and tables. It is shown that nanoparticles inclusion into the non-Newtonian fluids has a positive effect on thermal performance. In addition, the viscous variation parameter has a tendency to encourage the friction factor coefficient as well as the heat transfer rate. Moreover, Cu-kerosene nanofluid signifies a better thermal performance than the Ag-kerosene nanofluid.