Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Applied Mathematics Volume 2013, Article ID 634746, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/634746 Research Article Similarity Solution of Marangoni Convection Boundary Layer Flow over a Flat Surface in a Nanofluid Norihan Md. Arifin, 1 Roslinda Nazar, 2 and Ioan Pop 3 1 Institute for Mathematical Research and Department of Mathematics, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 2 School of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science & Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia 3 Department of Mathematics, Babes ¸-Bolyai University, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania Correspondence should be addressed to Norihan Md. Arifn; norihanarifn@yahoo.com Received 21 June 2013; Accepted 10 December 2013 Academic Editor: Mohamed Fathy El-Amin Copyright © 2013 Norihan Md. Arifn et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Te problem of steady Marangoni boundary layer fow and heat transfer over a fat plate in a nanofuid is studied using diferent types of nanoparticles. Te general governing partial diferential equations are transformed into a set of two nonlinear ordinary diferential equations using unique similarity transformation. Numerical solutions of the similarity equations are obtained using the Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg (RKF) method. Tree diferent types of nanoparticles are considered, namely, Cu, Al 2 O 3 , and TiO 2 , by using water as a base fuid with Prandtl number Pr = 6.2. Te efects of the nanoparticle volume fraction  and the constant exponent m on the fow and heat transfer characteristics are obtained and discussed. 1. Introduction A nanofuid is a colloidal mixture of nanosized particles (<100nm) in a base fuid. It is known that nanofuid can tremendously enhance the heat transfer characteristics of the original (base) fuid. One such characteristic of nanofuid is the anomalous high thermal conductivity at very low concen- tration of nanoparticles and the considerable enhancement of convective heat transfer. Tus, nanofuids have many applications in industry such as coolants, lubricants, heat exchangers, and microchannel heat sinks. Nanoparticles are made of various materials such as oxide ceramics, and nitride ceramics. Te objective of nanofuids is to achieve the best possible thermal properties with the least possible (<1%) volume fraction of nanoparticles in the base fuid [1]. Tere have been many studies in the literature to bet- ter understand the mechanism behind the enhanced heat transfer characteristics. An excellent collection of papers on this topic can be found in the book by Das et al. [2] and in several review papers ([3–8]). Tere are also several experimental studies to better understand the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement for natural convection heat transfer in nanofuids ([1, 9–12]). Marangoni fow induced by surface tension along a liquid surface causes undesirable efects in crystal growth melts in the same manner as buoyancy-induced natural convection [13]. Tese undesirable efects also occur in space-based crystal growth experiments since Marangoni fow is involved in microgravity as well as in earth gravity. An excellent view of the Marangoni efect from the perspective of all three possible interfaces as motion inducing agents has been done by Tadmor [14]. It is worth mentioning that there are two existing models for Marangoni boundary layer that have been studied, namely, model for nonisobaric Marangoni boundary layer as discussed by Golia and Viviani [15] and model for Marangoni boundary layer over a fat plate studied by Christopher and Wang [13]. Marangoni boundary layer studied by Golia and Viviani [15] has been extended by Pop et al. [16] where they included the concentration equation. Chamkha et al. [17] studied the same model with Golia and Viviani [15] in which they considered the gravity efects. Hamid et al. [18] extended the problem of the thermosolutal