Thermal enhancement of ternary hybrid Casson nanofluid in porous media: a sensitivity analysis study

The current study mainly explores unsteady, laminar and mixed convection boundary layer flow of Casson ternary hybrid nanofluid in Dary-Forchheimer porous medium about a rotating sphere with slip velocity condition. The study considers quadratic thermal radiation and Cattaneo-Christov heat flux model subjected to convective heating condition with entropy generation for efficient heat transfer and irreversible processes. The non-dimensional similarity variables are employed to convert the governing equations, nonlinear partial differential equations into nonlinear coupled ordinary differential equations. An implicit finite difference approach known, as Keller-box method numerically applied to solve the flow problem. The main findings for thermal and flow behavior of ternary hybrid nanofluid containing silver, titanium and alumina nanoparticles with blood as base fluid are presented through graphical and tabular forms. The outcomes depict that the magnetic field, inertia constant, unsteady and material parameter increases the velocity field, while angular velocity decreases. Moreover, the presence of thermal radiation and convective heat parameters highly optimize the thermal distributions of boundary layer, whereas the coefficient of heat transfer decreases. Conversely, thermal time relaxation and unsteadiness parameters lead to a decrease in temperature field and thermal boundary layer thickness for hybrid and ternary hybrid nanofluids. Entropy production reduces as magnetic parameter strengthen and increase with the Brinkmann number and convection parameter. The findings are confirmed a strong correlations with previous literature. Moreover, Response Surface Methodology and sensitivity analysis are established to quantify the effects of input parameters on thermal performance with values [Formula: see text] = 99.99%, and [Formula: see text]-adjusted = 99.98%, which confirm reliability of the result. The sensitivity analysis depicted that heat transfer rate is high sensitivity to heat generation, moderate sensitivity to nanoparticle volume fraction, and low sensitivity to radiation parameter with their maximum point 1.4178, 0.9898, and 0.4425, respectively. Further, ternary hybrid nanofluid reveals that greater heat transfer enhancement rate of [Formula: see text] than heat transfer enhancement of hybrid nanofluid [Formula: see text] at maximum value.