Stratified numerical heat and mass transport mechanism in MHD Maxwell fluid flow with nonuniform heat source/sink

Abstract

The present boundary layer flow of Maxwell fluid over a stretching sheet has good number of practical applications in metallurgy, drawing of plastics, polymer sheet extrusion including hot rolling extrusion, glass blowing, spinning of fibers, rubber and plastic sheets, crystal growing and many more. Due to these extensive applications of Maxwell fluid in engineering, medicine and manufacturing industries including the above-mentioned applications, authors have motived, inspired and investigated the present problem. However, in this research paper, the influences of Soret and Dufour effects on the steady-state Maxwell fluid flow past a stretching sheet with nonuniform heat source/sink are considered numerically. The thermal and concentration stratifications impacts are also incorporated. The viscous dissipation and magnetic field effects are also included in the respective governing equations. The main novelty and uniqueness of this numerical research is to generalize the earlier studies and describe the salient features of magneto-thermo visco-elastic dissipative Maxwell fluid motion about a stretching sheet with cross-diffusion effects under the influence of double stratification phenomena. To differentiate the non-Newtonian fluids from those of Newtonian fluids, a well-known Maxwell fluid flow model is used in the present study. The investigated physical problem results the highly nonlinear coupled partial differential equations (PDEs) and which are not amenable to any of the direct methods. Suitable similarity transformations are deployed to reduce the highly complex PDEs into the system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). A robust BVP4C Matlab function is employed to solve the rendered dimensionless system of ODEs. The numerically generated computed data is plotted in terms of velocity, temperature and concentration profiles including engineering quantities of interest such as skin-friction, Nusselt and Sherwood numbers in the flow region. It is evident from the current analysis that, the amplified magnetic field decreases the velocity field and increases the thermal and concentration distribution fields. Accelerating Maxwell’s number diminished the flow velocity and increased the temperature field. Increasing Soret and Dufour numbers enhances the concentration and temperature fields, respectively. Amplifying Maxwell’s number raises the skin-friction coefficient and enlarging the thermal stratification parameter magnifies the thermal transport rate. The mass transport rate amplified with a raise in concentration stratification number in the flow region. Finally, it is provided that, the current results are excellently matching with earlier published results in the literature and it confirms the accuracy of the used numerical method and the produced similarity solutions.