Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2015) 130: 178
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2015-15178-1

Regular Article

Model for natural convective flow of visco-elastic nanofluid past an isothermal vertical plate

¹ School of Natural Sciences (SNS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), 44000, Islamabad, Pakistan
² Research Centre for Modeling and Simulation (RCMS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), 44000, Islamabad, Pakistan

^* e-mail: meraj_mm@hotmail.com

Received: 17 December 2014
Accepted: 30 July 2015
Published online: 2 September 2015

Abstract

The present article addresses the classical problem of the natural convection flow past a vertical plate by considering visco-elastic nanofluid. The mathematical model is constructed by following the constitutive equations of the upper-convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid. The novel aspects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis are taken into account. The recently proposed condition of passively controlled wall nanoparticle volume fraction is used. The shooting approach combined with the fourth-fifth-order Runge-Kutta integration procedure is utilized for computing the numerical solutions. The results are in agreement with the available studies in limiting sense. Our results indicate that the velocity profile is parabolic and it decreases with an increment in the visco-elastic parameter.