Heating a cold semi-annulus wall by MHD natural convetion with nanofluid

Abstract

In the current research, the natural convection of water-Al2O3 nanofluid has been simulated inside a cold semi-annulus chamber with a hot block at the its bottom. Also, an oblique magnetic field (MHD) has been implemented to improve and control the flow. The unstructured triangular mesh and FVM with SIMPLE algorithm have been employed for discretization and coupling of pressure and velocity equations. In this simulation, the parameters of Hartmann, Rayleigh numbers and volume fraction of nanoparticles have been investigated on temperature contours, flow pattern, and hot wall Nusselt number. The observations show that, increasing the volume fraction increases the Nusselt number at low Rayleigh numbers. Moreover, the Nusselt number is inversely related to the Hartmann number for high Rayleigh numbers.

Keywords

• Natural convection
• MHD
• Cold semi-annulus
• Hot block
• CFD