The microchannel type effects on water-Fe3O4 nanofluid atomic behavior: Molecular dynamics approach

Abstract

BackgroundToday, thermal management in electronic and industrial equipment at nano and micro scales is an important issue and has a significant impact on the price and reliability of the system. For this reason, the use of microchannels (MCs) was considered by researchers. MC type is an important parameter for heat and mass transition applications. MC wall type change can optimize their performance for various industrial aims. MethodsMolecular Dynamics simulation (MDS) is utilized in the current computational examination to describe water/Fe3O4 nanofluid (NF) behavior inside MCs with Cu and Pt wall types. Our simulations consist of two main steps as equilibrium and atomic evolution steps. In the first step, the temperature and total energy (TE) of the MC-NF system are computed for the equilibrium phase detection process. Furthermore, density/velocity/temperature profile, potential energy (PE) and aggregation time are reported to atomic behavior description of simulated structures. MD outputs indicate that by changing the MC type from Pt to Cu, the atomic stability of the total system increases. Significant findingsUsing Cu and Pt atoms for the MC walls, the PEs of simulated structures were equal to −611,228 eV and −742,726 eV, respectively. Also, the nanoparticles (NPs) aggregation phenomenon was affected by MC wall type changes, and this phenomenon was occurred in 1.40 ns/1.45 ns time using Pt/Cu MC.