Magnetohydrodynamic Natural Convection Heat Transfer of Hybrid Nanofluid in a Square Enclosure in the Presence of a Wavy Circular Conductive Cylinder

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, steady natural convective heat transfer and flow characteristics of Al2O3-Cu/water hybrid nanofluid filled square enclosure in the presence of magnetic field has been investigated numerically. The enclosure is equipped with a wavy circular conductive cylinder. The natural convection in the cavity is induced by a temperature difference between the vertical left hot wall and the other right cold wall. The steady 2-D equations of laminar natural convection problem for Newtonian and incompressible mixture are discretized using the finite volume method. The effective thermal conductivity and viscosity of the hybrid nanofluid are calculated using Corcione correlations taking into consideration the Brownian motion of the nanoparticles. A numerical parametric investigation is carried out for different values of the nanoparticles volumic concentration, Hartmann number, Rayleigh number, and the ratio of fluid to solid thermal conductivities. According to the results, the corrugated conductive block plays an important role in controlling the convective flow characteristic and the heat transfer rate within the system.