Effect of thermal radiation and volume fraction on carbon nanotubes based nanofluid flow inside a square chamber

Abstract

Heat transfer and flow characteristics of Tiwari – Das model nanofluid inside a differentially heated square enclosure pondered with single walled carbon nanotubes and water by taking thermal radiation is examined in this paper. Vertical walls of the cavity are isothermal, such as, left wall is heated and right wall is cooled. The modeled momentum and energy equations are numerically solved by utilizing finite difference scheme. Streamlines and Isotherms with different values of pertinent variables, such as, volume fraction parameter (0.01≤φ≤0.05), Rayleigh number (105≤Ra≤3×105), Reynolds number (200≤Re≤400), Prandtl number (6.2≤Pr≤10.2) and radiation parameter (0.01≤R≤0.05) are plotted through graphs. Average Nusselt number values are also calculated for several values of parameters and are also represented through plots. It is found that the rate of heat transfer of nanofluid is augmented up to 6% when single walled carbon nanotubes of 5% are added to the base fluid. Radiation parameter enhances the values of Nusselt number inside the cavity. The present numerical code is validated with available data and noticed good agreement.

Keywords

• Single walled carbon nanotubes
• Square cavity
• Thermal radiation
• Prandtl number
• Finite difference method