International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Volume 118 No. 23 2018, 137-145

ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://acadpubl.eu/hub
Special Issue
ijpam.eu

Thermophoresis effects on viscoelastic

non-Darcy flow over a cone
B. Rushi Kumar1 , G. Sreedhara Rao2 ,
R. Vijayaragavan3 and R. Sivaraj1,∗
1
Department of Mathematics, School of Advanced Sciences,
VIT University, Vellore 632014, India
2
Faculty of Science and Technology,
The University of the West Indies,
St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
3
Department of Mathematics, Thiruvalluvar University,
Serkkadu, Vellore - 632 115, India.
sivaraj.kpm@gmail.com∗

Abstract
This paper is focused on the study of thermal radiation
and thermophoresis effects on unsteady, free convective vis-
coelastic fluid (Walters liquid-B model) flow over a vertical
cone saturated with non-Darcy porous medium in the pres-
ence of Soret and Dufour effects. The numerical computa-
tion for the governing equations has been performed using
an implicit finite difference method of Crank-Nicolson type.
The features of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer charac-
teristics are analysed by plotting graphs and the physical
aspects are discussed in detail to interpret the effect of var-
ious significant parameters of the problem.

Key Words: Viscoelastic fluid, non-Darcy porous medium,

Double dispersion effects, thermophoresis, cross diffusion ef-
fects.

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

1 Introduction
The use of non-Newtonian fluids has grown considerably because of
more applications in chemical process industries, food preservation
techniques, petroleum production and power engineering. The flow
and heat transfer behavior of viscoelastic fluids is of special inter-
est in many engineering fields. In view of these applications, the
study of boundary layer behavior has been channelized to viscoelas-
tic fluids. The Walters-B viscoelastic fluid model was developed by
Walters to simulate the viscous fluids possessing short memory elas-
tic effects and can simulate accurately many complex polymeric,
biotechnological and tribological fluids [1-5]. In many practical sit-
uations, the porous medium is bounded by an impermeable wall,
has higher flow rates, and reveals non-uniform porosity distribution
in the near wall region, making the Darcy’s law inapplicable. So
it is necessary to include the non-Darcian effects in the analysis of
convective transport in the porous medium. It is worth to mention
that the solution of non-Darcian forced flow boundary layers is of
great importance in many practical applications such as filtration
transpiration cooling, biomechanical and geothermal problems. In
literature, the attention has been devoted to the fluid flow through
non-Darcy porous medium [6-8]. The deposition of small micron
sized particles suspended in a non-isothermal gas from a hot surface
towards a cold one due to temperature gradients is known as ther-
mophoretic deposition. In this process, the repulsion of particles
from hot objects also takes place and a particle-free layer is ob-
served around hot bodies. The magnitudes of thermophoretic force
and velocity are proportional to the temperature gradient and de-
pend on thermal conductivity of aerosol particles, the carrier gas,
heat capacity of the gas, thermophoretic coefficient and Knudsen
number. The model finds applications in particles impacting the
blade surface of gas turbines, aerosol technology, deposition of sil-
icon thin films and air pollution control. Representative studies in
this area can be found in [9-11]. Motivated by the above referenced
works and the numerous possible industrial applications of engi-
neering fields, it is of paramount interest in this study to analyse
the thermophoresis effects on viscoelastic fluid non-Darcy flow over
a vertical cone with the influence of thermal radiation, Soret and
Dufour effects.

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2 Mathematical Formulation
We consider a two-dimensional, unsteady, free convection, non-
Darcy flow of an incompressible, viscoelastic (Walter’s liquid-B
model) fluid over a vertical cone saturated with porous medium.
The x−axis is taken in the direction along the cone which is set to
motion and the y−axis is taken perpendicular to it. The flow field is
exposed the influence of thermal and solutal buoyancy effects. The
heat equation includes radiative heat flux and Dufour effect whereas
mass transfer equation includes the effects of thermophoretic par-
ticle deposition and thermal diffusion. The wall y = 0 is main-
tained at constant temperature Tw and concentration Cw , higher
than the ambient temperature T∞ and ambient concentration C∞ ,
respectively. Taking into consideration of these assumptions, the
equations that describe the physical situation can be written in
Cartesian frame of references, as follows:

∂(ru) ∂(rv)
+ =0 (1)
∂x ∂y
∂u ∂u ∂u ∂ 2u ∂ 3u Cb ν
∗
+u +v = ν 2 − K0 ∗ 2 − √ u2 − u
∂t ∂x ∂y ∂y ∂t ∂y K1 K1
+gβT cos(α)(T − T∞ ) + gβC cos(α)(C − C∞ ) (2)
2 2
∂T ∂T ∂T k ∂ T 1 ∂qr DKT ∂ C
+u +v = − + (3)
∂t∗ ∂x ∂y ρCP ∂y 2 ρCP ∂y CS CP ∂ 2 y
∂C ∂C ∂C ∂VT C ∂ 2 C DKT ∂ 2 T
+ u + v + = D + (4)
∂t∗ ∂x ∂y ∂y ∂y 2 Tm ∂ 2 y
The appropriate initial and boundary conditions are

t∗ ≤ 0 : u = 0, v = 0, T = T∞ , C = C∞ for all x, y
t∗ > 0 : u = 0, v = 0, T = Tw , C = Cw at y = 0
u = 0, T = T ∞ , C = C∞ at x=0 (5)
u → 0, T → T∞ , C → C∞ as y→∞

Introducing the following non-dimensional quantities

x y r uL
X= , Y = (GrT )1/4 , R = , r = x sin(α), U = (GrT )−1/2 ,
L L L ν

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vL νt∗ T − T∞ C − C∞
V = (GrT )−1/4 , t = 2 (GrT )1/2 , θ = , ϕ= ,
ν L Tw − T∞ Cw − C∞
gβT (Tw − T∞ )L3 K0 Cb L µCP
GrT = 2
, E = 2 (GrT )1/2 , FI = √ , Pr = ,
ν L K1 k
1 L2 βC (Cw − C∞ ) ν 3
= , N= , Sc = , F = (4σs T∞ )/(3ke k),
K K1 (GrT )1/2 βT (Tw − T∞ ) D
DKT (Cw − C∞ ) K ∗ (Tw − T∞ ) DKT (Tw − T∞ )
Du = , τT = T , Sr =
νCS CP (Tw − T∞ ) Tr Tm (Cw − C∞ )
(6)
In view of the equation (6), the basic field of equations (1)-(4)
can be expressed in non-dimensional form as
∂(RU ) ∂(RV )
+ =0 (7)
∂X ∂Y
∂U ∂U ∂U ∂ 2U ∂ 3U U
+U +V = − E − FI U 2 −
∂t ∂X ∂Y ∂Y 2 ∂t∂Y 2 K
+ cos(α)θ + N cos(α)ϕ (8)
( ) 2
∂θ ∂θ ∂θ 1 4 ∂ θ ∂ 2ϕ
+U +V = + + D u (9)
∂t ∂X ∂Y Pr 3Pr F ∂Y 2 ∂Y 2
( ) 2
∂ϕ ∂ϕ ∂θ ∂ϕ 1 ∂ ϕ ∂ 2θ
+U + V + τT = + S r (10)
∂t ∂X ∂Y ∂Y Sc ∂Y 2 ∂Y 2
The appropriate initial and boundary conditions become
t ≤ 0 : U = 0, V = 0, θ = 0, ϕ = 0 for all X, Y
t > 0 : U = 0, V = 0, θ = 1, ϕ = 1 at Y = 0
U = 0, θ = 0, ϕ = 0 at X=0 (11)
U → 0, θ → 0, ϕ → 0 as Y →∞
Where α is the semi vertical angle of the cone, K0 is the di-
mensional Walters-B viscoelastic parameter, Cb is the drag coeffi-
cient which is independent of viscosity, KT is the thermophoretic
coefficient, Tr is the reference temperature, E is the Walters-B vis-
coelastic parameter, Gr is the thermal Grashof number, N is the
buoyancy ratio parameter, FI is the local inertia coefficient, K is
the permeability coefficient of porous medium, Pr is the Prandtl
number, F is the thermal radiation parameter, Du is the Dufour
number, Sc is the Schmidt number, τT is the thermophoretic pa-
rameter, Sr is the Soret number.

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3 Finite difference numerical solution

The region of integration is considered as a rectangle with max
Xmax = 1 and Ymax = 22 where Ymax corresponds to Y = ∞.
The mesh sizes have been fixed as ∆X = 0.05, ∆Y = 0.05 with
time step ∆t = 0.01. The steady state solution is assumed to have
been reached when the absolute difference between the values of
the velocity (U ), temperature (θ) as well as concentration (ϕ) at
two consecutive time steps are less than 10−5 at all grid points.
The scheme is unconditionally stable. The local truncation error is
O(∆t2 + ∆X 2 + ∆Y 2 ) and it tends to zero as ∆t, ∆X and ∆Y tend
to zero. It follows that the Crank-Nicolson Method is compatible.
Stability and compatibility ensure the convergence.

4 Results and discussion

Figure 1: Effect of E, FI and K on velocity distribution

Figure 2: Effect of Pr , F and Du &Sr on temperature distribution

Figure 3: Effect of Sc , τT and Du &Sr on concentration distribution

Numerical evaluation of this problem is performed and the re-

sults are illustrated graphically in Figs. 1-3 to show the interesting

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

features of significant physical parameters on the velocity, temper-

ature and concentration distributions. Throughout the computa-
tions we employ E = 0.005, FI = 0.3, K = 1, N = 0.5, Pr = 7,
F = 1, Du = 0.05, τT = 0.5, Sc = 0.96 and Sr = 1.2, unless oth-
erwise stated. Figures 1 presents the effect of E, FI and K on the
velocity distributions, respectively. It is observed that an increase
in viscoelastic parameter decreases the velocity of the fluid but little
away Y ≈ 2 from the cone because the higher values of viscoelas-
tic parameter have more stability than the smaller values. So, the
higher values of viscoelastic parameter destabilize the fluid flow. An
increase in the local inertia coefficient decreases the fluid velocity.
An increase in porous permeability parameter leads to enhance the
fluid velocity. This is due to fact that the obstruction in the motion
of the fluid reduces as the porous permeability increases (pore size
increases). Hence the fluid velocity increases in the boundary layer.
Figure 2 shows the influence of Pr , F and Du &Sr on the temper-
ature distributions, respectively. It is observed that an increase in
the Prandtl number results in decreases the heat transfer profiles.
The reason is that increasing values of Prandtl number equivalent
to increasing the thermal conductivities and therefore heat is able to
diffuse away from the heated cone and plate more rapidly. Hence
in the case of increasing Prandtl number, the boundary layer is
thinner and the heat transfer is reduced. In the simulation, the
values of Prandtl number are chosen as 0.71, 2.97, 4.24 and 7.0,
those correspond to air, methyl chloride, sulfur dioxide and water,
respectively. An increase in thermal radiation parameter reduces
the heat transfer. An increase in Du and a decrease in Sr , increases
the fluid temperature. Figure 3 is displayed to analyse the effect of
Sc , τT and Du &Sr on the concentration distributions, respectively.
It is noted that increases in Schmidt number increase the conduc-
tion which decrease the mass transfer. The values of the Schmidt
number are chosen to represent the presence of species by hydrogen
(0.22), water vapor (0.6), carbon dioxide (0.96) and hydrocarbon
derivatives (2). The fluid concentration decreases for increasing the
thermophoretic parameter. The concentration of the fluid gradu-
ally changes from higher value to the lower value only when the
strength of the thermophoretic particle deposition dominates the
strength of temperature-dependent fluid viscosity. An increase in
Du and a decrease in Sr , decreases the fluid concentration.

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5 Conclusions
The present study brings out the following outcomes:

• The fluid velocity decreases with an increase in the value of

E and FI whereas it increases with an increase in K.

• An increase in Du and a decrease in Sr have the tendency to

increase the heat transfer.

• Fluid concentration decreases for increasing τT .

• Higher values of Pr and Sc decrease the heat and mass trans-

fer, respectively.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge The Royal Society Common-
wealth Science Conference Follow-on Grants Scheme for their fi-
nancial support.

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