Natural convection flow of a nanofluid-filled V-shaped cavity saturated with a heterogeneous porous medium: Incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics analysis

Abstract

The flow and heat transfer fields of a nanofluid within V-shaped cavity are analyzed using the incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamic (ISPH) scheme. Novel studies on a nanofluid-occupied V-shaped cavity with a partial layer heterogeneous porous medium were conducted. The bottom and top corners of the V-shaped enclosure have isothermal conditions while the remaining boundaries are considered adiabatic. Lengths of the heated and cold parts are assumed to be variables. The flow domain is filled with a partial layer porous medium. Three levels of the porous medium are taken into account, namely, horizontal heterogeneous, vertical heterogeneous and homogeneous porous media. Impacts of the wide ranges of the hot–cold partitions lengths L p ( 0.2 ≤ L p ≤ 1.5 ) , the nanoparticles volume fraction ( 0 % ≤ ϕ ≤ 5 % ) , the Darcy number ( 10 - 2 ≤ D a ≤ 10 - 5 ) and the Rayleigh number ( 10 3 ≤ R a ≤ 10 5 ) on the features of the temperature and nanofluid flow are examined. The main outcomes disclosed that the average Nusselt number takes its maximum in case of the horizontal heterogeneous porous medium while the homogeneous porous medium case gives the lowest rate of the heat transfer. Therefore, for V-shaped cavity, the horizontal heterogeneous porous medium considers the best case of porous media. An augmentation on Rayleigh number rises the buoyancy force and accordingly the convective transport is enhanced. Further, the convective flow is enhanced as the hot–cold partitions lengths increase, regardless the porous case.