Numerical Investigation of Natural Convection in a Cube filled with Nanofluid

Abstract

In this project, natural convective heat transfer in a partitioned cube utilizing nanofluids is studied. The vertical left and right walls are considered as the hot and cold walls, respectively and the partitions assumed to be adiabatic. The nanofluid used in this study is Al2O3 with the volume fraction of 20%. It is assumed that nanofluid is a single phase fluid. CFX and FLUENT 12.1.2 is used to simulate the problem. The influence of different parameters such as Rayleigh’s number (Ra=105 and 107), height of partition (h=0.1, 0.3, 0.5) at a fixed distance from the walls are studied. According to the results, Rayleigh’s number and height of the partition are important factors that extremely affect the streamlines and isotherms. At Ra=107, the flow is confined in the distance between walls and partitions. Furthermore, at high partitions, the isotherms are horizontal between two partitions. For a fixed amount of the partition height, Nusselt number increases as the Rayleigh number rises. On the other hand, for a fixed Rayleigh, with the increasing partition height, Nusselt number decreases along the hot wall.