Molecular dynamics simulation of the thermal properties of the Cu-water nanofluid on a roughed Platinum surface: Simulation of phase transition in nanofluids

Barrier size influences on the thermal behavior of Ar/Cu nanofluid are reported in this simulation work. Molecular dynamics method is implemented with a large molecular/atomic parallel simulator. Furthermore, Ar/Cu nanofluid is simulated with Universal Force Field (UFF) and Embedded Atom Model (EAM) force fields and these force fields are appropriate to our thermal study. For the thermal behavior of this nanofluid, we record the physical parameters like total energy, thermal conductivity of nanofluid, density, the number of nanofluid atoms in the gas phase, and atomic temperature. Simulation results show that atomic structures have thermal stability with -318 eV value for total energy parameter. Physically, the atomic barrier causes the atomic phase transition phenomena to happen in a shorter time. Numerically, this parameter varies from 0.61 ns to 0.55 ns when the Platinum (Pt) barriers height increases from 5 angstrom to 10 angstrom. We calculated that the maximum density of nanofluid atoms reaches to 0.00025 Atom/angstrom(3) by atomic barriers enlarging. So, we conclude that, by increasing the received heat flux with Ar/Cu nanofluid, the thermal conductivity converged in shorter simulation time. Numerically, the thermal conductivity of simulated structures converges to 0.016400 W/m.K after 0.63 ns. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This simulation work investigates the influence of barrier size on the thermal behavior of Ar/Cu nanofluid, showing that increasing barrier height leads to higher atomic density and affects thermal conductivity.