Unsteady three-dimensional stagnation-point flow and heat transfer of a nanofluid with thermophoresis and Brownian motion effects

An unsteady three-dimensional stagnation-point flow of a nanofluid past a circular cylinder with sinusoidal radius variation is investigated numerically. By introducing new similarity transformations for the velocity, temperature, and nanoparticle volume fraction, the basic equations governing the flow and heat and mass transfer are reduced to highly nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The resulting nonlinear system is solved numerically by the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method with the shooting technique. The thermophoresis and Brownian motion effects occur in the transport equations. The velocity, temperature, and nanoparticle concentration profiles are analyzed with respect to the involved parameters of interest, namely, unsteadiness parameter, Brownian motion parameter, thermophoresis parameter, Prandtl number, and Lewis number. Numerical values of the friction coefficient, diffusion mass flux, and heat flux are computed. It is found that the friction coefficient and heat transfer rate increase with increasing unsteadiness parameter (the highest heat transfer rate at the surface occurs if the thermophoresis and Brownian motion effects are absent) and decrease with increasing both thermophoresis and Brownian motion parameters. The present results are found to be in good agreement with previously published results.