Melting Effect on Unsteady Hydromagnetic Flow of a Nanofluid Past a Stretching Sheet

Abstract

This paper considers unsteady, laminar, boundary-layer flow with heat and mass transfer of a nanofluid along a horizontal stretching plate in the presence of a transverse magnetic field, melting and heat generation or absorption effects. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into a set of non-similar equations and solved numerically by an efficient implicit, iterative, finite-difference method. A parametric study illustrating the influence of various physical parameters is performed. Numerical results for the steady-state velocity, temperature and nanoparticles volume fraction profiles as well as the time histories of the skin-friction coefficient, Nusselt number and the Sherwood number are presented graphically and discussed.