Comment on the homogeneous nanofluid models applied to convective heat transfer problems

Abstract

In several recent papers, the heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids have been investigated by simply replacing the transport coefficients of the base fluid by the effective transport coefficients of the nanofluids. The present note emphasizes, however, that the governing equations of these homogeneous nanofluid models (in which the velocity-slip effects of the nanoparticles are neglected) can be reduced with the aid of elementary scaling transformations to the respective equations of the regular fluids. Thus, the corresponding nanofluid results can be recovered from the solutions of already solved regular problems by simple arithmetic operations, without any additional research effort. This feature is illustrated here by the specific examples of the classical Blasius and Sakiadis forced convection heat transfer problems.