Instability of Walter’s B' visco-elastic nanofluid layer heated from below

Abstract

Thermal instability in a horizontal layer of Walter’s B' visco-elastic nanofluid has been investigated. A linear stability analysis based upon normal mode technique and perturbation method is used to find the solution of the fluid layer confined between two free-free boundaries. The stability criteria for stationary and oscillatory convection have been derived and graphs have been plotted to study the effects of the concentration Rayleigh number, Prandtl number, capacity ratio, Lewis number and kinematics visco elasticity parameter on the stationary and oscillatory convection. The sufficient conditions for the non-existence of oscillatory convection have also been obtained.