Numerical Investigation of Cu–H2O Nanofluid in a Differentially Heated Square Cavity with Conducting Square Cylinder Placed at Arbitrary Locations

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the problem of a laminar flow heat transfer with copper–water nanofluid inside a lid-driven cavity with a solid conducting cylinder. The cavity is being heated by a differential heater (0.5L) having isothermal boundary conditions and placed at the left wall and is symmetric about the midpoint of the left wall. The right wall has low temperature and isothermal boundary condition. The upper wall is moving in the positive x-direction and is insulated. Rest of the walls are insulated. The thermal performance of nanofluid is analyzed at five different locations of the conducting cylinder, percentage volume of copper nanoparticles (0, 3, 5%) and Richardson number, Ri (0.01, 1). Grashof number and Prandtl number are fixed to 104 and 6.2, respectively. It is observed that heat transfer depends on the location of the conducting cylinder and Richardson number. For Richardson number 0.01, the Nusselt number is more when the conducting cylinder is placed near the cold wall and moving wall but for Richardson number 1, the Nusselt number is found to be more near the heated wall and the moving wall.