Uncertainties in physical property effects on viscous flow and heat transfer over a nonlinearly stretching sheet with nanofluids

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a numerical analysis for the flow and heat transfer in a viscous fluid over a nonlinear stretching sheet utilizing nanofluid. The governing partial differential equations are converted into highly nonlinear ordinary differential equations by a similarity transformation. Different water-based nanofluids containing Cu, Ag, CuO, Al2O3, and TiO2 are considered in our problem. Furthermore, four different models of nanofluid based on different formulas for thermal conductivity and dynamic viscosity on the flow and heat transfer characteristics are discussed. The variations of dimensionless surface temperature, dimensionless surface temperature gradient as well as the flow and heat transfer characteristics with the governing parameters are graphed and tabulated. Comparison with published results for pure fluid flow is presented and it is found to be in excellent agreement. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.