Laminar Forced Convection of Various Nanofluids in Sudden Expansion Channels Under Constant Heat Flux: A CFD Study

Abstract

In the present work, forced convection heat transfer was investigated numerically for the fully developed fluid flow of incompressible viscous laminar flow under the constant wall heat flux in sudden expansion channels. Various fluids were used with different concentration of nanoparticle such as Al2O3, TiO2, ZnO, CuO, SiO2. These nanoparticles were dispersed with the range of 0.5–2% volume concentrations in pure water to form stable suspensions of nanofluids. The flow assumed to be uniform in the channel inlet and numerical computations were performed for the fully developed laminar flow conditions. Ansys Fluent 16.1 code, based on finite volume approach was used to calculate the governing continuity, momentum and energy equations. Effect of the Re numbers (100[Formula: see text]Re[Formula: see text]500), nanoparticle volume concentration (0.5%[Formula: see text]2.0%) and nanofluid type on the flow and heat transfer characteristics such as convective heat transfer coefficient, Nu number, friction factor and pressure drop has been investigated. Al2O3/water nanofluid was found better when compared the other references working fluids by means of heat transfer enhancement.