Activation energy and convective heat transfer effects on the radiative Williamson nanofluid flow over a radially stretching surface containing Joule heating and viscous dissipation

Abstract

This article recognizes the time-dependent axisymmetric flow of a non-Newtonian Williamson fluid caused by a radially stretching surface in the presence of nanoparticles in the porous medium. The combined impacts of Joule heating and viscous dissipation on the flow profiles are also discussed. Chemical reaction at the surface is implemented. The convective heat transfer model and Brownian motion are also studied for the electrically conducting nanofluid flow. The Williamson nanofluid flow has been modeled using a set of partial differential equations based on the fundamental conservation laws of mechanics. By using nondimensional quantities, these equations are first transformed into ordinary differential equations. The Galerkin weighted residual method is performed to resolve these equations numerically. Visual displays and detailed descriptions of the impacts of relevant variables on the thermal performance, concentration field, and velocity field are provided. It is noticed that the thermal profile enhances as the values of the Brownian motion parameter and temperature ratio parameter increase while declining when the values of the velocity slip parameter increase. The Biot number, activation energy, and unsteadiness parameters have proportional effects on the concentration profile, but the reaction parameter has inversely proportional effects on the concentration profile. Heat transfer rate increases with increasing the Weissenberg number and velocity slip parameter, drops with increasing the thermophoresis and unsteadiness parameters, and the Arrhenius activation energy. Finally, a comparison of the obtained numerical solution for the porous and nonporous medium are also done graphically and discussed in details.

Keywords:

• Activation energy
• Galerkin weighted residual method
• porous medium
• radially stretching sheet
• Williamson fluid

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been carried out with the financial support of UGC, India, in the form of Junior Research Fellowship under research scheme no. 1147/(CSIR-UGC NET JUNE 2019) awarded to one of the author (Sonu Kumar Saini).