Free convection in a parallelogrammic porous cavity filled with a nanofluid using Tiwari and Das' nanofluid model

Mohammad Ghalambaz; Mikhail A Sheremet; Ioan Pop

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0126486

Free convection in a parallelogrammic porous cavity filled with a nanofluid using Tiwari and Das' nanofluid model

PLoS One. 2015 May 19;10(5):e0126486. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126486. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Mohammad Ghalambaz¹, Mikhail A Sheremet², Ioan Pop³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dezful Branch, Islamic Azad University, Dezful, Iran.
² Department of Theoretical Mechanics, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia; Institute of Power Engineering, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia.
³ Department of Applied Mathematics, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Abstract

The free convection heat transfer of Cu-water nanofluids in a parallelogrammic enclosure filled with porous media is numerically analyzed. The bottom and top of the enclosure are insulated while the sidewalls are subject to limited temperature difference. The Darcy flow and the Tiwari and Das' nanofluid models are considered. The governing dimensionless partial differential equations are numerically solved using a finite difference code. The results are reported for isotherms and streamlines as well as Nusselt number as a function of the volume fraction of nanoparticles, porosity, types of the porous matrix, inclination angle, aspect ratio and different Rayleigh numbers. It is found that the presence of the nanoparticles inside the enclosure deteriorates the heat transfer rate, which is caused due to the increase of dynamic viscosity by the presence of nanoparticles. Therefore, in applications in which the nanofluids are used for their advantages, such as enhanced dielectric properties or antibacterial properties, more caution for the heat transfer design of the enclosure is necessary.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Models, Theoretical*
Nanotechnology*
Porosity

Grants and funding

This work of M.A. Sheremet was conducted as a government task of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Project Number 13.1919.2014/K. The other authors received no specific funding for this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.