Heat transfer of copper/water nanofluid flow through converging-diverging channel

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to investigate analytically the steady nanofluid flow and heat transfer characteristics between nonparallel plane walls. Using appropriate transformations for the velocity and temperature, the basic nonlinear partial differential equations are reduced to the ordinary differential equations. Then, these equations have been solved analytically and numerically for some values of the governing parameters, Reynolds number, Re, channel half angle, α, Prandtl number, Pr, and Eckert number, Ec, using Adomian decomposition method and the Runge-Kutta method with mathematic package. Analytical and numerical results are searched for the skin friction coefficient, Nusselt number and the velocity and temperature profiles. It is found on one hand that the Nusselt number increases as Eckert number or channel half-angle increases, but it decreases as Reynolds number increases. On the other hand, it is also found that the presence of Cu nanoparticles in a water base fluid enhances heat transfer between nonparallel plane walls and in consequence the Nusselt number increases with the increase of nanoparticles volume fraction. Finally, an excellent agreement between analytical results and those obtained by numerical Runge-Kutta method is highly noticed.