Nowadays ferrofluids (magnetic nanofluids) are at the center of many researches because of their major biomedical applications such as drug delivery and cancer treatment. The effects of chemical reaction, temperature gradient induced mass transfer and concentration gradient induced heat transfer on the stability of ferrofluid flow are of great importance. This paper deals with a stability analysis of a ferrofluid composed of blood as base fluid and magnetic nanoparticles. The study integrates the effects of chemical reactions, the effects of mass transfer (Soret effect), the effects of heat transfer (Dufour effect) and the effects of the Buoyancy force. The flow is exposed to a magnetic field and thermal radiation. A system of eigenvalue equations governing the evolution of disturbances is derived by assuming a normal mode analysis. This system of equations is then solved numerically by the method of collocation. It appears from this study that the addition of nanoparticles to the blood increases its inertia, which dampens the amplitude of the disturbances and stabilizes the flow. The Casson parameter affects the stability of the flow by increasing the amplitude of the disturbances, which reflects its destabilizing effect. It appears from this study that taking into account the non-Newtonian nature of blood is very important when modeling the dynamics of the system because it shows more important and very different results than when blood is treated as a Newtonian fluid. The chemical reaction between the fluid and the nanoparticles leads to the redistribution of disturbances within the flow, which amplifies the instabilities and reflects the destabilizing character of the chemical reaction. On the other hand, temperature gradient induced mass transfer effects and concentration gradient induced heat transfer effects play an essential role on the stability of the flow because they attenuate the amplitude of the disturbances in the flow. The Darcy number exhibits a stabilizing effect on the flow. It appears from this analysis that the porosity of the medium increases the contact surface between the fluid and the nanoparticles. Buoyancy forces, thermal radiation parameter and wave number contribute to the stability of the flow. The magnetic field through the Lorentz force decreases the kinetic energy of the flow, which dissipates the disturbances and thus reflects the stabilizing character of the magnetic field. It should be noted that heat and mass transfer on magnetohydrodynamic flows through porous media taking into consideration the effect of chemical reaction appears in many natural and artificial transport processes in several branches of science and engineering applications. This phenomenon plays an important role in the chemical industry, power and cooling industry for drying, chemical vapor deposition on surfaces, cooling of nuclear reactors and petroleum industry. The effects of thermal radiation, mass and heat transfer are used in many situations in biomedical engineering and aerospace engineering.
Keywords: Chemical reaction; Dufour effect; Ferrofluid; Soret effect; Stabilty analysis.
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