Detailed investigation on thermal enhancement and mass transport in 3D flow of Carreau-Yasuda ternary and hybrid nanofluids using the finite element method

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze the transportation of heat and mass in three-dimensional (3D) shear rate-dependent viscous fluid. Thermal enhancement plays a significant role in industrial and engineering applications. For this, the authors dispersed trihybrid nanoparticles into the fluid to enhance the working fluid's thermal enhancement.Design/methodology/approachThe finite element method is a numerical scheme and is powerful in achieving convergent and grid-independent solutions compared with other numerical techniques. This method was initially assigned to structural problems. However, it is equally successful for computational fluid dynamics problems.FindingsWall shear stress has shown an increasing behavior as the intensity of the magnetic field is increased. Simulations have predicted that Ohmic heat in the case of trihybrid nanofluid (MoS2-Al2O3-Cu/C2H6O2) has the greatest value in comparison with mono and hybrid nanofluids. The most significant influence of chemical reaction on the concentration in tri-nanofluid is noted. This observation is pointed out for both types of chemical reaction (destructive or generative) parameters.Originality/valueThrough a literature survey, the authors analyzed that no one has yet to work on a 3D magnetohydrodynamics Carreau-Yasuda trihybrid nanofluid over a stretched sheet for improving heat and mass transfer over hybrid nanofluids. Herein, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), aluminum oxide (Al2O3) and copper (Cu) nanoparticles are mixed in ethylene glycol (C2H6O2) to study the thermal enhancement and mass transport of their corresponding resultant mono (Cu/C2H6O2), hybrid (Al2O3-Cu/C2H6O2) and trihybrid (MoS2-Al2O3-Cu/C2H6O2) nanofluids.