Melting heat transfer analysis of non-Newtonian fluid: An application to phase change materials (PCM)

Abstract Phase change materials (PCM) and melting heat transfer aspects are widely used in most of the engineering applications such as polymer processing, energy storage systems etc. This present communication is to explore stagnation point flow due to moving surface under melting heat transfer condition with the help of non-Newtonian fluid model. Casson rheological model is used to expose viscoelastic characteristics in the porous media. System of momentum, energy and concentration differential equations are turned into differential equations of similarity variable and then solved by applying shooting method. Detailed analysis about important engineering quantities such as skin friction and Nusselt number are computed for non-Newtonian (Casson) model and Newtonian model. The results of this study shows that velocity and concentration profiles decrease due to the Casson parameter.