Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2015) 130: 155
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2015-15155-8

Regular Article

Nanofluid flow and forced convection heat transfer over a stretching surface considering heat source

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Babol University of Technology, Babol, Iran
² Department of Textile and Apparel, Qaemshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qaemshahr, Iran
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Yazd, Yazd, Iran

^* e-mail: p.valipour123@gmail.com

Received: 12 May 2015
Revised: 4 July 2015
Accepted: 9 July 2015
Published online: 30 July 2015

Abstract

In this paper, magnetic field effects on the forced convection flow of a nanofluid over a stretching surface in the presence of heat generation/absorption are studied. The equations of continuity, momentum and energy are transformed into ordinary differential equations and solved numerically using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta integration scheme featuring the shooting technique. Different types of nanoparticles as copper (Cu), silver (Ag), alumina (Al₂O₃) and titania (TiO₂) with water as their base fluid has been considered. The influence of significant parameters, such as magnetic parameter, volume fraction of the nanoparticles, heat generation/absorption parameter, velocity ratio parameter and temperature index parameter on the flow and heat transfer characteristics are discussed. The results show that the values of temperature profiles increase with increasing heat generation/absorption and volume fraction of the nanoparticles but they decrease with increasing velocity ratio parameter and temperature index parameter. Also, it can be found that selecting silver as nanoparticle leads to the highest heat transfer enhancement.