Natural convective boundary layer flow of a nanofluid past a convectively heated vertical plate

Natural convective flow of a nanofluid over a convectively heated vertical plate is investigated using a similarity analysis of the transport equations followed by their numerical computations. The transport model employed includes the effect of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The analysis shows that velocity, temperature and solid volume fraction of the nanofluid profiles in the respective boundary layers depend, besides the Prandtl and Lewis numbers, on four additional dimensionless parameters, namely a Brownian motion parameter Nb, a thermophoresis parameter Nt, a buoyancy-ratio parameter Nr and convective parameter Nc. In addition to the study of these parameters on the boundary layer flow characteristics (velocity, temperature, solid volume fraction of the nanofluid, skin friction, and heat transfer), correlations for the Nusselt and Sherwood numbers have been developed based on a regression analysis of the data. These linear regression models provide a highly accurate (with a maximum standard error of 0.004) representation of the numerical data and can be conveniently used in engineering practice. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.