Space-fractional heat transfer analysis of hybrid nanofluid along a permeable plate considering inclined magnetic field

Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 25;12(1):5220. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-09179-9.

Abstract

In this study, the Caputo space-fractional derivatives of energy equation are used to model the heat transfer of hybrid nanofluid flow along a plate. The plate is considered permeable and affected by an inclined magnetic field. We use the space-fractional derivative of Fourier's law to communicate between the nonlocal temperature gradient and heat flux. The hybrid nanofluid is formed by dispersing graphene oxide and silver nanoparticles in water. The new fractional integro-differential boundary layer equations are reduced to ordinary nonlinear equations utilizing suitable normalizations and solved via a novel semi-analytical approach, namely the optimized collocation method. The results reveal that the increment of the order of space-fractional derivatives and the magnetic inclination angle increase the Nusselt number. Also, an increase in the order of space-fractional derivatives leads to a thicker thermal boundary layer thickness resulting in a higher temperature. It is also found that the temperature of the fluid rises by changing the working fluid from pure water to single nanofluid and hybrid nanofluid, respectively. What is more, the proposed semi-analytical method will be beneficial to future research in fractional boundary layer problems.