Soret-Dufour Effects on Heat and Mass Transfer of Newtonian Fluid Flow over the Inclined Sheet and Magnetic Field

Abstract

Newtonian fluid is ideal for lubrication purposes because the viscosity of this fluid remains as a function of the shear. Besides, the heat and mass transfer are an important study area in fluid dynamics due to its vast applications in industrial processes. The heat-mass transfer can be defined as the Soret and Dufour effect, which implemented in many industrial applications such as in chemical engineering and geosciences field. In addition, the fluid flow over an extending/compressing sheet has significant industrial applications such as the cooling of continuous strips, glass fibre production, the extrusion of plastic sheets from a die, etc. As a response, this study aims to investigate the impacts of Soret and Dufour parameters on the Newtonian fluid flow over an inclined stretching/shrinking sheet. The methodology of this mathematical model are stated as follow: 1) the transformation of partial differential equations (PDEs) to the ordinary differential equations (ODEs), and 2) The ODEs are solved using bvp4c solver in MATLAB software. The bvp4c solver is a MATLAB program directory that solves general form and multi-point boundary layer problems. The main sections of bvp4c are: 1) The solution of the ODEs, 2) The related boundary conditions that can produce the expected results, and 3) An initial guess to run the bvp4c solver. As a result, the numerical and graphical results show that the Soret effect increases the concentration profile whereas decreases the temperature profile. The vice versa occurrence is true for Dufour effect. The convective mass transfer caused by a temperature gradient is known as thermal-diffusion (Soret) effect. The convective heat transfer produced by concentration differences is known as diffusion-thermo (Dufour) effect. However, since the process of heat and mass transfers are related to each other, the Soret and Dufour effects are able to influence both of this process simultaneously. In conclusion, the convective heat transfer is enhanced by increasing Soret and Dufour number while the convective mass transfer is declined by increasing the two numbers.