Thermo-fluidic transport process in a novel M-shaped cavity packed with non-Darcian porous medium and hybrid nanofluid: Application of artificial neural network (ANN)

In this work, an attempt has been made to explore numerically the thereto-fluidic transport process in a novel M-shaped enclosure filled with permeable material along with Al2O3-Cu hybrid nanoparticles suspended in water under the influence of a horizontal magnetizing field. To exercise the influence of geometric parameters, a classical trapezoidal cavity is modified with an inverted triangle at the top to construct an M-shaped cavity. The cavity is heated isothermally from the bottom and cooled from the top, whereas the inclined sidewalls are insulated. 'Me role of geometric parameters on the thermal performance is scrutinized thoroughly by changing the sidewall inclination, number, and height of the top inverted triangular undulation under similar boundary conditions. The governing equations transformed into dimensionless form are solved by using a computing code written in the finite volume approach. The analysis is conducted by considering a wide range of parametric influences like sidewall angles (gamma), number (eta), and height (delta) of the top triangular undulations, modified Rayleigh number (Ra-m) Darcy number (Da), Hartmann number (Ha), and hybrid nanoparticle concentrations (phi). Furthermore, the artificial neural network (ANN) technique is implemented and tested to predict the overall thermal behavior of the novel cavity to predict new cases. The results revealed that the design of sidewall inclination (gamma) is an important parameter for modulating the thermo-flow physics. The M-shaped cavity (compared to trapezoidal) reveals either a rise or drop in the fluid circulation strength depending upon the magnitude of delta, but the heat transfer rate always increases due to an increase in the cooling length. The heat transfer increment is similar to 61.01% as delta increases. Single undulation with higher depth is the optimum choice for achieving improved heat transfer (which may go up to similar to 355.75% for delta = 0.5 and gamma = 45 degrees). A decrease in Da or Ha causes a drop in the flow strength, which consequently leads to a drop in the heat transfer rate. Furthermore, the concepts of ANN will help researchers predict the behavior for such complicated cavity shapes with a multiphysics approach. This will save efforts as well as computing time for exploring the thermal behavior of any range of a dataset. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.

Automated summary

In this work, the numerical exploration of thermofluidic transport process in an M-shaped enclosure filled with permeable material and suspended with Al2O3-Cu hybrid nanoparticles is conducted. The impact of geometric parameters on thermal performance is analyzed, and an artificial neural network technique is implemented for prediction. The results reveal the importance of sidewall inclination and top triangular undulation in modulating thermo-flow physics.