Abstract
The study of nanofluids is very much valuable in many technological flows of high heat transfer processes. In this paper, we investigate the stability characteristics of a fully developed mixed convection flow in a vertical channel filled with water-Al2O3nanofluid. The instability properties are examined through a linear stability analysis. A spectral collocation method is used to solve the basic flow and linear stability equations. The influence of nanoparticle volume fraction (ϕ) on basic flow characteristics and instability mechanism is examined. The results show that the growth rate of disturbance decays to increase the nanoparticles strength in the flow. The linear stability analysis shows that the critical value of the Rayleigh number (Ra) increases with ϕ, which indicates stabilizing impact of the strength of nanoparticle volume fraction on basic flow. However, the stability of the flow decreases on increasing Reynolds number (Re). In general, this mixed convection flow of water is significantly less stable due to thermal effects. However, the inclusion of the Al2O3 nanoparticles in the water maintains the stability properties of the mixed convection flow in many applications.
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