Heat Transfer Characteristic Investigation of Nanofluids Laminar Forced Convection Using Numerical Method

The present study was aimed to investigate of laminar forced convection flow of water-Al2O3 nanofluids in a horizontal tube by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. ANSYS Fluent 12 was used to simulate the water based nanofluids considering as a single phase and two phase models as well as employed with constant and dependent temperature. The both models of laminar forced convection in horizontal tube have been simulated in volume concentrations of nanofluids 1% and 4% by varying the Reynolds number at 250 and 1050 respectively. The convective heat transfer coefficient for nanofluids is greater than only base fluid. The heat transfer enhancement increases by particle volume fraction of nanofluids. However it is responsible to the increases of wall shear stress value. Meanwhile, the numerical method showed that the two phase model with dependent temperature has better approach than single phase model with varied thermal properties.