Turbulent combined forced and natural convection of nanofluid in a 3D rectangular channel using two-phase model approach

Abstract

The nanofluid is a mixture of base fluid and solid nanoparticles in nanosize. The heat transfer generated by the nanofluid is more than the base fluid and its lowering pressure drop, which is why its use is increasing. In this paper, the effect of volume fraction, aspect ratio and diameter of the nanoparticles on the turbulent mixed convection in a three-dimensional rectangular channel is numerically investigated. The boundary conditions are constant heat flux, and governing equations are numerically solved by the mixture model. Base fluid in this study, water and aluminum oxide are used as nanoparticles. In this study, all physical properties are considered constant and the effects of volume fraction, aspect ratio and diameter of the particles on the thermal and hydrodynamic parameters of the fluid were studied.