Modeling Forced Convection Nanofluid Heat Transfer Using an Eulerian-Lagrangian Approach

An Eulerian-Lagrangian model is used to simulate turbulent-forced convection heat transfer in internal flow using dilute nanofluids. For comparison, a single-phase model of the nanofluid which describes a nanofluid as a single-phase fluid with appropriately defined thermophysical properties is also implemented. The Eulerian-Lagrangian model, which requires only the properties of the base fluid and nanoparticles separately, is seen to predict the heat transfer characteristics accurately without resort to any models for the thermophysical properties. The simulations with the single-phase model show that it can very well be used to predict the heat transfer behavior of dilute nanofluids as long as the thermophysical properties are directly those measured experimentally or those predicted from a Brownian motion based model. These approaches are particularly useful for engineering estimation of heat transfer performance of equipment where nanofluids are expected to be used.