Design characteristics of symmetrical semicircle-corrugated channel on heat transfer enhancement with nanofluid

Abstract

Enhancing the geometrical parameters design of thermal devices leads to promote the thermal performance and boost design plan of these devices to make it more compact. In the current study, heat transfer and flow characteristics of the symmetry semicircle-corrugated channel with (SiO2) - water nanofluid was performed numerically over Reynolds number ranges of 10,000–30,000. The influence of geometrical parameters including height-to-width ratio (h/W) and pitch-to-length ratio (p/L) on the thermal and hydraulic characteristics are evaluated. A numerical simulation covering nanofluid with SiO2 volume fractions of 0–8.0% was carried out by employing the finite volume method for discretization of the governing equations. The outcomes revealed that the height-to-width ratio has greater influence on the promotion of heat transfer compared to the pitch-to-length ratio. At Reynolds number 30,000, there is 13.59% increment in Nuav due to a decrease of the pitch-to-length ratio from 0.175 to 0.075, with an increment of about 78.84% due to an increase of the height-to-width ratio from 0.0 to 0.05. The results indicate that the height-to-width ratio of 0.05 with a pitch-to-length ratio of 0.075 are the optimum parameters and have shown significant improvement in thermal performance factor. Furthermore, new correlations for Nusselt number and friction factor are developed and reported.