Mixed Convection of Cu–H2O Nanofluid in a Darcy–Forchheimer Porous Medium Microchannel with Thermal Radiation and Convective Heating

Abstract

Heat transfer and convective flow of Cu–H2O nanofluid in a microchannel with thermal radiation has many attributes in engineering, industries, and biomedical sciences including cooling of electronics, drug delivery, cancer therapy, optics, missiles, satellites, and lubricants. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the hydrodynamical behaviors and heat transfer characteristics of Cu–H2O nanofluid through a porous medium microchannel with thermal radiation and convective heating. The highly non-linear partial differential equations that govern the momentum and energy equations are formulated, non-dimensionalized, transformed into ordinary differential equations and solved numerically via the fourth order Runge-Kutta integration scheme. Consequently, the numerical simulation reveals that the nanofluid velocity and temperature profiles show a rising pattern with increasing values of the pressure gradient parameter, variable viscosity parameter, Darcy number, thermal Grashof number and Eckert number. The temperature profile escalates with the Prandtl number however it diminishes with the Biot number, Forchheimer number, suction/injection Reynolds number and nanoparticles volume fraction. Furthermore, the thermal radiation parameter indicates a retarding effect on the temperature profile and hence, radiation quite effectively controls the microchannel temperature distribution which plays a significant role in cooling the flow transport system. The skin friction coefficient at both microchannel walls indicates a rising pattern with the suction/injection Reynolds number, thermal Grashof number, Eckert number and Darcy number. Moreover, at both microchannel walls the heat transfer rate enhances for large values of the suction/injection Reynolds number, thermal Grashof number, Eckert number, variable viscosity parameter and Darcy number whereas it decreases with the thermal radiation parameter, Forchheimer number and nanoparticles volume fraction. The Biot number reveals an opposite effect on the heat transfer rate at the left and right walls of the microvhannel.