Enhancement in heat transfer due to hybrid nanoparticles in MHD flow of Brinkman-type fluids using Caputo fractional derivatives

The flow of fluid through porous media is of great importance in industry and other physical situations, Darcy’s law is one of the most useful laws to describe such situation, however, the flows through a dense swarm of particles or through a very high porous media cannot be elaborated by this law. To overcome this difficulty, Brinkman proposed a new idea of Brinkman-type fluid in highly porous media. In this study, the Brinkman-type fluid flow is analyzed with hybrid nanoparticles (a hybridized mixture of clay and alumina), suspended in water taken as a base fluid under the effect of an applied magnetic field. The fluid motion is taken inside a vertical channel with heated walls. Free convection is induced due to buoyancy. The momentum and energy equations are written in dimensionless form using the non-dimensional variables. The energy equation is modified to fractional differential equations using the generalized Fourier’s law and the Caputo fractional derivatives. The fractional model is solved using the Laplace and Fourier transformation. Variations in velocity and temperature are shown for various fractional parameter values, as well as charts for the classical model. For the volume fractions of nanoparticles, the temperature distribution increases, with maximum values of hybrid nanoparticles with the highest specified volume fractions. Moreover, due to hybrid nanoparticles, the rate of heat transfer is intensified.