Peristaltic micro-pumps offer an excellent mechanism for delivery of a variety of
medicines including drugs, corneal solutions etc. The surge in deployment of nanoparticles
in medicine has provided new potential for such pumps. In light of this we investigate
the time-dependent peristaltic flow of nanofluids with diffusive effects through a
finite non-uniform channel, this geometry being more representative of real micro-pumps.
Creeping flow is taken into account (inertial forces are small compared with viscous
forces) i.e., Reynolds number is low (Re <1) and wavelength is also taken to be very
large. The Buongiorno formulation for nanofluids is employed with an Oberbeck-Boussinesq
approximation. Closed-form solutions are developed for the non-dimensional governing
equations subject to physically realistic boundary conditions. Mathematica symbolic
software is employed to evaluate the evolution of nanoparticle fraction, temperature,
axial velocity, transverse velocity and pressure difference distribution along the
length of the pump channel with variation in thermal Grashof number, basic-density
(species i.e., mass) Grashof number, Brownian motion parameter and thermophoresis
parameter.
