Augmentation of the Heat Transfer Performance of a Sinusoidal Corrugated Enclosure by Employing Hybrid Nanofluid

Abstract

This paper numerically examines laminar natural convection in a sinusoidal corrugated enclosure with a discrete heat source on the bottom wall, filled by pure water, Al2O3/water nanofluid, and Al2O3-Cu/water hybrid nanofluid which is a new advanced nanofluid with two kinds of nanoparticle materials. The effects of Rayleigh number (103≤Ra≤106) and water, nanofluid, and hybrid nanofluid (in volume concentration of 0% ≤ ϕ ≤ 2%) as the working fluid on temperature fields and heat transfer performance of the enclosure are investigated. The finite volume discretization method is employed to solve the set of governing equations. The results indicate that for all Rayleigh numbers been studied, employing hybrid nanofluid improves the heat transfer rate compared to nanofluid and water, which results in a better cooling performance of the enclosure and lower temperature of the heated surface. The rate of this enhancement is considerably more at higher values of Ra and volume concentrations. Furthermore, by applying the modeling results, two correlations are developed to estimate the average Nusselt number. The results reveal that the modeling data are in very good agreement with the predicted data. The maximum error for nanofluid and hybrid nanofluid was around 11% and 12%, respectively.