Effects of melting process on the hydromagnetic wedge flow of a Casson nanofluid in a porous medium

An investigation is carried out to capture the influence of melting process and permeability of the medium on the hydromagnetic wedge flow of a Casson nanofluid. The effects of thermophoresis and Brownian motion are also taken into consideration. The coupled nonlinear partial differential equations that govern the nanofluid flow are reduced to coupled non-linear ordinary differential equations by employing similarity transformation. Thereafter, numerical solution of the resulting boundary value problem is obtained using a fourth-order accurate collocation based solver in MATLAB. Aparticular case of the present problem is compared with a previously published study, and the results are found to be in excellent agreement. The impact of pertinent physical entities on nanofluid velocity, nanofluid temperature, and nanoparticle concentration are presented graphically, while local skin friction, heat transfer, and mass transfer rates are recorded in a tabular form. It is found that melting process increases the thicknesses of momentum, thermal and solutal boundary layers while it reduces skin friction, heat and mass transfer rates. Wedge angle and Casson nanofluid parameters enhance the fluid velocity; however, the impact of the magnetic field and permeability of the medium is opposite to that of their usual characteristics. This study would be valuable in designing cooling gadgets and heat sinks of various shapes which will enhance the heat transfer properties of Casson nanofluids thereby increasing their applications in industrial perspectives.