Study of Natural Convection in a Square Cavity Filled with Nanofluid and Subjected to a Magnetic Field

This paper presents a numerical study of natural convection cooling of water-Al2O3 nanofluid by two heat sinks vertically attached to the horizontal walls of a cavity subjected to a magnetic field. The left wall is hot, the right and the horizontal walls are insulated. Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is applied to solve the coupled equations of flow and temperature fields. This study has been carried out for the pertinent parameters in the following ranges: Rayleigh number of the base fluid, Ra = 10(3) to 10(5), Hartmann number varied from Ha = 0 to 60 and the solid volume fraction of nanoparticles between Phi = 0 and 6%. In order to investigate the effect of heat sinks location, three different configurations of heat sinks are considered. Results show that the heat sinks positions greatly influence the heat transfer rate depending on the Hartmann number, Rayleigh number and solid volume fraction of nanoparticles.