The impact of variable fluid properties on natural convection flow past a vertical cone

A free convective flow of an incompressible viscous fluid past an isothermal vertical cone is investigated with variable viscosity and variable thermal conductivity. The constant wall temperature (CWT) and constant wall heat flux (CHF) conditions are used as temperature boundary conditions at the surface of the cone. The successive linearization method is applied to linearize the governing nonlinear differential equations of the flow. The numerical solution for the resulting linear equations is attained through the Chebyshev spectral collocation method. The impact of significant parameters on the velocity and temperature, in addition to heat and mass transfer rates, is evaluated and represented graphically for the CWT and CHF situations. The local heat transfer rate decreases, and the coefficient of the skin friction increases with an increase in the viscosity and thermal conductivity parameters for CWT conditions, but the reverse trend is noticed for CHF conditions.