The onset of nanofluid bioconvection in a suspension containing both nanoparticles and gyrotactic microorganisms

The purpose of this paper is to study the onset of bioconvection in a horizontal layer filled with a nanofluid that also contains gyrotactic microorganisms. The idea is to use microorganisms to induce or enhance convection in a nanofluid. A linear instability analysis is used to solve this problem. A Galerkin method is utilized to obtain an analytical solution for the critical Rayleigh number for the non-oscillatory situation. As in the case of a regular nanofluid (without the microorganisms), the presence of nanoparticles can either reduce or increase the value of the critical Rayleigh number, depending on whether the basic nanoparticle distribution is top-heavy or bottom-heavy. In contrast, the effect of gyrotactic microorganisms is always destabilizing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.