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ARTICLE

Computational-Analysis of the Non-Isothermal Dynamics of the Gravity-Driven Flow of Viscoelastic-Fluid-Based Nanofluids Down an Inclined Plane

Idrees Khan^1,2, Tiri Chinyoka^1,2,*, Andrew Gill³

1 Centre for Research in Computational & Applied Mechanics, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa
2 Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa
3 Centre for High Performance and Computing, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Rosebank, Cape Town, 7700, South Africa

* Corresponding Author: Tiri Chinyoka. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Electro- magnetohydrodynamic Nanoliquid Flow and Heat Transfer)

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2023, 19(3), 767-781. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2022.021921

Received 13 February 2022; Accepted 07 May 2022; Issue published 29 September 2022

Abstract

The paper explores the gravity-driven flow of the thin film of a viscoelastic-fluid-based nanofluids (VFBN) along an inclined plane under non-isothermal conditions and subjected to convective cooling at the free-surface. The Newton’s law of cooling is used to model the convective heat-exchange with the ambient at the free-surface. The Giesekus viscoelastic constitutive model, with appropriate modifications to account for non-isothermal effects, is employed to describe the polymeric effects. The unsteady and coupled non-linear partial differential equations (PDEs) describing the model problem are obtained and solved via efficient semi-implicit numerical schemes based on finite difference methods (FDM) implemented in Matlab. The response of the VFBN velocity, temperature, thermal-conductivity and polymeric-stresses to variations in the volume-fraction of embedded nanoparticles is investigated. It is shown that these quantities all increase as the nanoparticle volume-fraction becomes higher.

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Keywords

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