Parametric study on a convective flow in a thermal storage using IBM/thermal lattice Boltzmann flux solver

One of the most popular topics in the field of engineering is natural convection due to its wide applications. Hence, the analysis of entropy production helps the researcher to design more efficient thermal systems. At this end, the present works tries to provide a comprehensive view on hydrodynamic, thermal and entropy production attitudes of free convection in a simplified thermal storage. The thermal storage is filled with alumina-water nanofluid. To solve the governing equations, the lattice Boltzmann method is employed and combined with Immersed Boundary Method. The immersed boundary method is applied to perform an accurate and effective numerical simulation of thermal flow in the curved boundaries. In the result section, the streamlines and temperature field are depicted. In addition, the contributions of entropy production are extracted graphically. The numerical results are gathered for various influential factors such as Rayleigh number (Ra in range of 103 to 106), alumina nanoparticle concentration 0 <= wt%<= 1 and aspect ratio of fins (AR in range of 0.200 to 0.588).

Automated summary

This paper focuses on the entropy production of natural convection in a simplified thermal storage using alumina-water nanofluid. The lattice Boltzmann method and Immersed Boundary Method are combined for accurate numerical simulation. The results show the streamlines, temperature field, and the influences of various factors.