Numerical investigation of the non-Newtonian power-law fluid with convective boundary conditions in a non-Darcy porous medium

Abstract

The boundary layer nanofluid flow over a horizontal plate embedded in a non-Darcy porous medium is investigated in this study. Non-Newtonian power-law fluid is considered the base fluid. The nanofluid model incorporated the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. A mixed convective boundary condition that is more useful, in practice, is employed at the surface instead of Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. The flow and convective heat transfer has engineering and industrial applications such as the thermal design of industrial equipment dealing with molten plastics and polymeric liquids and applications in nuclear plants and thermal energy storage processes. The main aim of this study is to use the spectral quasi-linearization method to study the effects of non-Newtonian nanofluid flow over a horizontal surface for a porous medium. The objective is to explore both the accuracy and the convergence of the method through the evaluation of residual errors and error norms and to investigate the impact of specific parameters on flow behavior and heat transfer characteristics. The velocity profile increases for higher values of the power law index and mixed convection parameter. The influence of the number of active variables on dimensionless temperature profiles increases for different values of the Biot number.