Internal heat generation effect on transient natural convection in a nanofluid-saturated local thermal non-equilibrium porous inclined cavity

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to analyze the convective flow and heat transfer of nanofluid in an inclined cavity filled with heat generating porous medium using the local thermal non-equilibrium model. The horizontal bottom wall of the cavity is maintained at a constant higher temperature while the left and right vertical walls are maintained at a constant lower temperature. The top wall is to be kept as adiabatic. The Darcy model is adopted for flow through the porous medium and the Boussinesq approximation is taken into account. The pores are saturated by a water-based nanofluid consisting of Cu nanoparticles. The governing equations are solved iteratively by finite difference based Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) method. The results are discussed by various combinations of parameters involved in the study. The average heat transfer rate decreases when increasing the values of nanoparticle volume fraction for the case of high Rayleigh numbers. The heat transfer rate is enhanced by increasing values of the modified conductivity ratio and the porosity of the media. The results have possible applications in the heat-storage nanofluid-saturated porous systems.