Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2015) 130: 162
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2015-15162-9

Regular Article

The onset of MHD nanofluid convection with Hall current effect

School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, 120 749, Seoul, South Korea

^* e-mail: jinholee@yonsei.ac.kr

Received: 22 December 2014
Revised: 25 June 2015
Accepted: 10 July 2015
Published online: 14 August 2015

Abstract

In this paper, the combined effects of Hall current and magnetic field on the onset of convection in an electrically conducting nanofluid layer heated from below is investigated. A physically more realistic boundary condition on the nanoparticle volume fraction is taken i.e. the nanoparticle flux is assumed to be zero rather than prescribing a nanoparticle volume fraction on the rigid impermeable boundaries. The employed model incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The resulting eigenvalue problem is solved using the Galerkin method. The results obtained during the analysis are presented graphically for an alumina-water nanofluid. It is observed that the effect of smaller values of the Hall current parameter and the nanoparticle parameters accelerate the onset of convection, while larger values of the Hall current parameter (≥ 15) have no effect on the system stabilities.