LAUSR

Abstract The present work deals with the three-dimensional hybrid Cu-Al2O3/water nanofluid flow towards a stretching/shrinking sheet with the presence of velocity slip and convective conditions. A permeable sheet is considered to maintain the shrinking flow through an adequate wall mass suction. The nonlinear governing boundary layer coupled with energy equations are transformed into the ordinary differential equations using similarity transformation. Numerical computations are performed with the aid of boundary value problem solver (bvp4c) in the Matlab software and the results are presented in the tables and graphs. The boundary layer separation occurs in the shrinking flow region. An upsurge of slip and copper nanoparticle volume fraction parameters can increase the range of first and second solutions whereas Biot parameter give zero impact on delaying the boundary layer separation. However, an increase of Biot and slip parameters can boost the heat transfer rate while opposite result is obtained with the augmentation of the copper solid volume fraction. The stability of both solutions are examined, and it is validated that the first (upper branch) solution is more stable than second solution.