COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THERMAL CHARACTERISTICS OF METALLIC AND NONMETALLIC WATER-BASED NANOFLUIDS IN A SQUARE CAVITY

Abstract

Heat transfer fluids are a dynamic factor that affects the costs and size of heat exchangers. However, low thermal properties of accessible coolants like water and oils place a setback on the growth of heat transfer to attain high-performance cooling. The paper presents a numerical analysis of a comparative study on thermal characteristics of Al₂O₃, CuO, AlN, and SiC water-based nanofluids in a square cavity. The cavity is surrounded by a hot moving horizontal plate, an adiabatic vertical wall on the right, and the left vertical and lower horizontal sides by cold isothermal walls. The governing equations were solved using finite approximation techniques to assess the thermal characteristics of the four different nanofluids in the enclosure with varying sizes of nanoparticles in the range of 1% ≤ φ ≤ 10%. The results reveal that CuO has a different pattern of heat characteristics compared to other nanofluids. CuO has the highest Nusselt number of 58.4715, and Al₂O₃ has the least value of 58.4634 at a 10 % volume fraction. Nanoparticle size has a substantial influence on the thermal attributes of the four nanofluids. This work indicates that different nanofluids have satisfactory thermal characteristics than based fluid water, which determines its applications.

Keywords Cavity, Nanofluids, Natural convection, Heat transfer enhancement

DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/11-2-08

Publication date: September 30^th 2021