Mixed bioconvection flow of Ag-MgO/water in the presence of oxytactic bacteria and inclined periodic magnetic field

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical investigation on mixed bioconvection flow of silver(Ag)-magnesium oxide(MgO)-water hybrid nanofluid in a trapezoidal porous cavity under the effect of inclined periodic magnetic field is carried out. Brinkman–Forchheimer-extended Darcy model for the porous medium is adopted. Galerkin weighted residual finite element method is implemented to simulate the governing steady dimensionless equations. The resulting discrete nonlinear algebraic systems are treated using the adaptive Newton's method. The fluid flow, heat and mass transfer behavior are examined in variation of parameters as Hartmann number (Ha=0−100), angle of periodic magnetic field (θ=0∘−90∘), period of periodic magnetic field (Λ=0.1−1), bioconvection Rayleigh number (Rb=10−100), Richardson number (Ri=0.1−5), Lewis number (Le=1−10) and Peclet number (Pe=0.1−1). The rise in Hartmann number has a weakening effect on both transfer of heat and mass. When θ=0∘, convective heat and mass transfer is the smallest at Λ=1 where the most reduction in the average Nusselt and Sherwood numbers is 9.14% and 6.98% as Λ is raised from 0.1 to 1, respectively, and occurs at Ha=100. The significant decrement in the average Nusselt number is 42.57% at Ha=75 and in the Sherwood number is 10.4% at Ha=50 when θ is changed from 0∘ to 90∘.