Heat transfer and irreversibility evaluation of non-Newtonian nanofluid density-driven convection within a hexagonal-shaped domain influenced by an inclined magnetic field

Abstract

Non-Newtonian flows are a relatively recent aspect of industrial heat transfer and fluid mechanics. The development of new products, the use of conventional fluids under special conditions, the interaction of heat exchange phenomena with viscosity variations, and the search for new manufacturing processes all encourage us to evaluate industrial problems involving fluid flows that do not obey Newton's classical law. The present study deals with the modelling and the numerical simulation of natural convective flow, heat exchange, and entropy generation features within a hexagonal-shaped domain influenced by an inclined magnetic field and filled with a non-Newtonian shear-thickening fluid charged with Alumina nanoparticles. Three variant configurations of three cooling channels positioned inside the domain are considered. The equations system resulting from the mathematical modelling of the physical problem has been discretized via the finite element method. The spatial distribution of apparent viscosity was portrayed in this study. The findings represented that by growing the Power-law index from 1.2 to 1.8 as well as the magnetic field's power from 0 to 80, the mean Nusselt would descend 27.5% and 12.1%, respectively. Moreover, it was recognized that Config.2 might present the highest mean Nu among other cases examined in this research.

Keywords

• Shear-thickening nanofluid
• Hexagonal-shaped enclosure
• Magnetic natural convection
• Apparent viscosity
• Entropy generation
• Cooling channels