Boundary Layer Stagnation-Point Flow Toward a Stretching/Shrinking Sheet in a Nanofluid

Abstract

An analysis is carried out to study the steady two-dimensional stagnation-point flow of a nanofluid over a stretching/shrinking sheet in its own plane. The stretching/shrinking velocity and the ambient fluid velocity are assumed to vary linearly with the distance from the stagnation point. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. A similarity solution is presented which depends on the Prandtl number Pr, Lewis number Le, Brownian motion parameter Nb and thermophoresis parameter Nt. It is found that the local Nusselt number is a decreasing function, while the local Sherwood number is an increasing function of each parameters Pr, Le, Nb, and Nt. Different from a stretching sheet, the solutions for a shrinking sheet are nonunique.