Numerical study on the mixed convection with nanofluids in vertical channel asymmetrically heated

Abstract

Abstract Mixed convection heat transfer in cavities is of great interest in many industrial applications, such as the development of crystals, the thermal control of electronic components, the nuclear reactors and various manufacturing processes. Components are generally located on the wall of a channel, that can be also tilted and their thermal control is carried out by the fluid flow. They can be schematized as thermal sources on vertical boards and the heat flux is removed by natural or mixed convection. As to the mixed convection, the interaction between the buoyancy forces and the external flow plays a significant role in the thermal design of systems. When natural convection is not strong enough to remove heat flux, mixed convection is adoptedIn particular, mixed convection due to moving surfaces is very important is these applications. Mixed convection because of buoyancy and motion of one of the channel walls has received little research attention and few guidelines are available for choosing the best performing channel configuration. Moreover, to optimize the transfer through natural convection, it is possible to modify the geometric parameters of the component, thus maximizing the convective heat transfer coefficient. If this is not possible or if one chooses to keep the geometry of the component unchanged for design choices, a possible alternative is the use of nanofluids. The properties of nanofluids exhibit a behaviour ranging between the properties of the base fluid and the properties of the nanoparticles. However, the addition of nanoparticles in the working fluid is considered to enhance the thermal behaviour of the base fluid. In this study a numerical investigation of mixed convection in nanofluids due to the interaction between a buoyancy flow and a moving plate induced flow in a vertical channel is carried out. The moving plate has a constant velocity and moves in the same direction with respect to the buoyancy force. The channel principal walls are heated with uniform heat flux. The numerical analysis is obtained by means of the commercial code Fluent. The effects of the different wall heat fluxes and moving plate velocities are investigated and results in terms of the channel wall and moving plate temperatures and Nusselt numbers are given.