Unsteady flow and heat transfer of Maxwell nanofluid in a finite thin film with internal heat generation and thermophoresis

Abstract

This paper studies the unsteady flow and heat transfer of Maxwell nanofluid in a finite thin film over a stretching sheet. The heat generation, Brownian motion and thermophoresis are taken into consideration. Coupled non-linear governing PDE are formulated and local similarity solutions are obtained by BVP4C. Results show that, unlike Newtonian fluid, the relaxation characteristics of Maxwell fluid have strongly effects on thermal and concentration transmission, there exist intersections in the distributions of temperature and concentration, the local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers increases with the increase of Brownian number. Moreover, the combined effects of pertinent physical parameters, such as the unsteadiness, Deborah number, Prandtl number, Lewis number, Brownian number, thermophesis parameter, local Nusselt number, and local Sherwood number on velocity, temperature, and concentration fields are also analyzed and discussed.