Convective Heat Transfer of Magnetic Nanofluids in a Microtube

Abstract

This paper conducts an analysis of convective heat transfer of magnetic nanofluids in an isothermally heated microtube. The main purpose is to investigate the influences of particle volume fraction and external magnetic field strength on the fluid velocity, temperature, pressure, pressure drop, flow drag, and heat transfer rate. Firstly, a flow and heat transfer model is built. A water-based magnetite (Fe3O4) nanofluid is then pre-pared, and a thermal flow test system is further de-signed, so as to verify the theoretical model with experimental data. Finally, the thermal flow fields and the corresponding characteristics are numerically analyzed by using the marching implicit (MI) procedure. The results reveal that when the particle volume fraction is increased, the average flow drag also increases while the average heat transfer rate goes down. Furthermore, as the external magnetic field strength is increased, the average flow drag rises and the average heat transfer rate also rises in the general case.