Thermal performance investigation of transient natural convective nanofluid flow in a square cavity with inclined periodic magnetic field

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze the thermal exhibition of transient free convective nanofluid flow in a square cavity with inclined periodic magnetic field using one-component thermally equilibrium homogeneous model. Distinct thermal settings (constant, parabolic, and sinusoidal) for the left heated wall are deliberated when the right wall of the cavity is cold and the horizontal walls are insulated. For numerical simulations, eight types of nanofluids consisting Cu, Co, Zn, and Al2O3 nanoparticles along with H2O and kerosene as base fluids have been employed. During numerical computation, the impacts of different factors (Hartmann number, Rayleigh number, nanoparticles volume fraction, period, and inclination angle) on the fluid flow and heat transfer are examined. The numerical results show that cobalt-kerosene nanofluid distributes the maximum heat transfer rate compared to other 7 types of nanofluids. The results also indicate that sinusoidal thermal scenery at the left heated wall delivers the uppermost average Nusselt number compared to the other types of thermal approaches. The optimum thermal performance is achieved at magnetic field's inclination angle δ=π3 and period number λ = 1 for the case of sinusoidal scenery.

Keywords

• Nanofluids
• Heat transfer
• Inclined periodic magnetic field
• Natural convection
• Brownian motion
• Finite element method (FEM)