Cross-Diffusion Impacts on Jeffrey Nanofluid Flow in a Lorentz Force–Driven Stretchable Channel with Nonlinear Radiation

This study investigates the three-dimensional flow and heat transfer characteristics of a Jeffrey nanofluid flowing through a stretching channel under the influence of a Lorentz force generated by an applied magnetic field. The Jeffrey fluid model is a significant non-Newtonian fluid model that accounts for both relaxation and retardation effects, which are important in describing the viscoelastic behavior of complex fluids. The incorporation of magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) effects enables the analysis of electrically conducting fluids subjected to magnetic forces, which are widely encountered in industrial and engineering applications such as cooling systems, polymer processing, and biomedical devices. The analysis further considers nonlinear thermal radiation to accurately represent heat transfer at high temperature conditions. In addition, the Soret and Dufour effects are included to examine cross-diffusion phenomena between heat and mass transfer processes. The Soret effect describes mass diffusion caused by temperature gradients, whereas the Dufour effect represents energy flux generated due to concentration gradients. These coupled transport mechanisms significantly influence the thermal and concentration boundary layers. The governing nonlinear PDEs are transformed into ODEs using suitable similarity transformations and solved numerically. The effects of various controlling physical parameters on velocity, temperature, and concentration distributions are examined in detail. The numerical results reveal that an increase in the Dufour number enhances thermal energy transport, leading to higher temperature and velocity profiles while reducing concentration distribution. Conversely, increasing the Soret number strengthens mass diffusion induced by temperature gradients, thereby improving concentration and velocity distributions within the boundary layer region.