Insight into the hydrothermal performance for buoyancy flow of a micropolar nanofluid past a stretching/shrinking sheet with viscous dissipation effects

Abstract Drilling liquid plays a vital role in separating oil and gas from soil and rocks. Clay nanomaterials are vital for increasing the effectiveness of drilling liquids. Adding clay nanoparticles to drilling liquids improves their viscosity, thermal conductivity, and boiling point, making them more resistant to high temperatures and cost-effective. This work depicts the convective heat transport in drilling micropolar nanofluid in a porous medium by incorporating heat source/sink and viscous dissipative effects. The significant thermophysical properties of clay nanomaterials are theoretically represented by the formulas of Brinkman and Maxwell–Garnett. The leading equations are transmuted into non-dimensional ordinary differential equations by choosing suitable variables and then using a bvp4c solver in MATLAB to find dual solutions. It examines the velocity field, micro-rotation profile, and temperature distribution inside the boundary-layer flow. The results suggest that the heat transport, the couple stress, and the friction factor are augmented due to the material parameter. The friction factor and heat transfer rate escalate with larger values of the solid nanoparticles' volume fraction by about 5.50% and 3.05%, respectively, while the couple-stress coefficient decreases up to 7.40%. In addition, the velocity and micro-rotation profiles are reduced due to the modified porosity factor, while the temperature is uplifted in both solutions.