CFD Study for the Flow Behaviour of Nanofluid Flow over Flat Plate

Abstract

Computation fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling of laminar heat transfer behaviour of three types of nanofluids over flat plate are studied. In the modelling the two dimensional under laminar model is used. The base fluid is pure water and the volume fraction of nanoparticles in the base fluid is 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4%. The applied Reynolds number range considered is 997.1 ≤ Re ≤ 9971. For modelling of the physical properties of the nanofluid, single phase approach is used. The effect of the volume fraction and the type of nanoparticles on the physical properties has been evaluated and presented. Then, the analysis the flow behaviour of these three nanofluids is conducted by presenting the effect of increasing the nanoparticles concentration on the velocity profile, wall shear stress, skin friction coefficient, and average heat transfer coefficient. The results show that the type of nanoparticles is an important parameter for the heat transfer enhancement as each type has shown dissimilar behaviour in this study. Moreover, a polynomial correlation has been obtained to present the relation of the wall shear stress, skin friction coefficient and average heat transfer coefficient as a function of the volume fraction for the three nanofluids.