Heat Transfer—Asian Res. 2019;1–27. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/htj © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1 Received: 8 July 2019 | Accepted: 5 August 2019 DOI: 10.1002/htj.21567 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Finite element analysis of couple stress micropolar nanofluid flow by non‐Fourier’s law heat flux model past stretching surface Wubshet Ibrahim 1 | Gosa Gadisa 2 1 Department of Mathematics, Ambo University, Ambo, Ethiopia 2 Department of Mathematics, Wollega University, Nekemte, Ethiopia Correspondence Wubshet Ibrahim, Department of Mathematics, Ambo University, Ambo, Ethiopia. Email: wubshetib@yahoo.com Abstract Numerical analysis has been done to investigate magnetohydrodynamics nonlinear convective flow of couple stress micropolar nanofluid with Catteneo‐ Christov heat flux model past stretching surface with the effects of heat generation/absorption term, chemical reaction rate, first‐order slip, and convective boundary conditions. The coupled highly nonlinear differential equation governing the steady incompressible laminar flow has been solved by a powerful numerical technique called finite element method. The impacts of diverse parameters on linear velocity, angular velocity (micro- rotation), temperature, concentration profile, local skin friction coefficient, local wall couple stress, local Nusselt number, and Sherwood number are presented in graphical and tabular form. The result pointed out that the enhancement in material parameter β increases the velocity of the fluid while the couple stress parameter K has quite opposite effect. Heat and mass transfer rate of the fluid are enhanced by increasing material parameter while couple stress parameter shows the opposite influence. Moreover, heat and mass transfer rate are higher with the Catteneo‐Christov heat flux model than Fourier’s law of heat conduction. The accuracy of the present method has been confirmed by comparing with previously published works.