Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2016) 131: 16
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2016-16016-8

Regular Article

Heat and mass transfer in nanofluid thin film over an unsteady stretching sheet using Buongiorno’s model

¹ Department of Mathematics, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
² Department of Mathematics, University of Malakand, 18800, Khyber Pakhtunktwo, Pakistan
³ 3Maplesoft, Waterloo, N2V 1K8, Ontario, Canada
⁴ Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering College of Engineering, Majmaah University, Majmaah, Saudi Arabia

^* e-mail: mq_qau@yahoo.com

Received: 3 July 2015
Accepted: 3 December 2015
Published online: 22 January 2016

Abstract

The heat and mass transport of a nanofluid thin film over an unsteady stretching sheet has been investigated. This is the first paper on nanofluid thin film flow caused by unsteady stretching sheet using Buongiorno’s model. The model used for the nanofluid film incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The self-similar non-linear ordinary differential equations are solved using Maple’s built-in BVP solver. The results for pure fluid are found to be in good agreement with the literature. Present analysis shows that free surface temperature and nanoparticle volume fraction increase with both unsteadiness and magnetic parameters. The results reveal that effect of both nanofluid parameters and viscous dissipation is to reduce the heat transfer rate.