Natural convection heat transfer enhancement in a differentially heated parallelogrammic enclosure filled with cooper-water nanofluid

Abstract EN

Laminar steady natural convection of a nanofluid consists of water and copper in a differentially heated parallelogrammic enclosure has been studied and solved numerically using finite volume method.

Two-dimensional governing equations have been solved to investigate the flow behavior over a wide range of the Rayleigh numbers (104 ≤ Ra ≤ 106), skew angles (-60°≤ Φ ≤ + 60°) aspect geometric ratios (0.5 ≤ AR≤4) and solid volume fractions (0 ≤ φ ≤ 0.2).

Effects of all these parameters on the flow and thermal fields are presented in the form of streamline, isotherm contours and average Nussle number and discussed in detail.

It is shown that the heat transfer rate increases remarkably by the addition of copper-water nanofluid and the shape of the convection vortices is sensitive to the skew angle variation.

Also, it is observed that the average Nusselt number at the hot left sidewall increases with the increasing of the solid volume fraction and the Rayleigh number.

Comparison with previous published work on the natural convection in a Nano fluid filled enclosure is performed and an excellent agreement between the results is observed.