Effect of Dispersed Nanoparticles on Thermophysical Properties of Nanofluid and Heat Transfer

Coefficients

Hossein Afshar1, Mehrzad Shams2, Seyed Mojtaba Mousavi Nainian2, Goodarz Ahmadi3
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad University, East Tehran Branch, Tehran,
Iran
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
3
Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
13699, USA
Ho_afshar@yahoo.com

Key words: Microchannel, Nanofluid, Nanoparticle, Heat Transfer, Two phase flow

Nanofluid connotes a colloidal suspension with dispersed nano-size particles. Experiments over
the past decade have revealed that thermal conductivity of the suspension can be significantly
higher than that of the base medium. Early attempts to explain this behavior have made use of
the classical model of Maxwell for statistically homogenous, isotropic composite materials with
randomly dispersed spherical particles of uniform size. This model is generally applicable to
dilute suspensions with micron size particles. With sub-micron sized oxide particles, Maxwell’s
model predicts a noticeably lower thermal conductivity enhancement and in the case of very fine
metallic (Cu and Au) nano-particles, the enhancement is too low by almost an order of
magnitude.
Effective heat transfer improvement affects many different fields, however a particular
beneficiary is the semiconductor industry. The relatively low thermal conductivity of
conventional heat transfer fluids is quickly becoming a major obstacle in the advancement of
microelectronic devices. As power density and output of modern processing units continues to
increase, the demands of fluid cooling systems will also rise. Although enhancements in heat
transfer characteristics of conventional fluids using additives have been observed, a complete
understanding is far from being found. In addition, there are many observed and unexplained
phenomena related to nanoscale heat transfer, and it is of high interest within the research
community to explore these ideas.
Thoughts on the dominant enhancement mechanism bounced around in the earlier years but have
recently settled somewhat on Brownian particle motion. As particle size decreases into the nano
arena this random motion influence becomes significant. Some propose this is why larger sized
particles quickly settle while smaller ones behave diffusively. It’s believed this random motion
increases energy transfer, through convection, between particle and fluid. This rests on the idea
of spherical boundary layer formation around the particles.
In this research, Eulerian-Lagrangian approach is used to model the dispersed (nanoparticles)
and carrier (air) phases. Navier–Stokes and energy equations for carrier phase in a microchannel
are solved and temperature and velocity profiles are evaluated.
The effect of heat transfer from fluid to particles and from particles to fluid is considered and the
incident nanoparticles with the microchannel walls are diffusively reflected.
The results for the effect of different sizes of nanoparticles and speed of air flow on variation of
microchannel heat transfer will be presented.