Heat Transfer and Flow of Nanofluids in a Y-Type Intersection Channel with Multiple Pulsations: A Numerical Study

Wei-Tao Wu, Mehrdad Massoudi and Hongbin Yan
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Wei-Tao Wu: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Mehrdad Massoudi: U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA 15236, USA
Hongbin Yan: School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-18

Abstract: In this paper, we study pulsed flow and heat transfer in water-Al 2 O 3 nanofluids in a Y-type intersection channel with two inlets and one outlet. At the two inlets, two sinusoidal velocities with a phase difference of ? are applied. We assume that the shear viscosity and the thermal conductivity of the nanofluids depend on the nanoparticles concentration. The motion of the nanoparticles is modeled by a convention-diffusion equation, where the effects of the Brownian motion, thermophoretic diffusion, etc., are included. The effects of pulse frequency, pulse amplitude and nanoparticles concentration on the heat transfer are explored numerically at various Reynolds numbers. The results show that the application of the pulsed flow improves the heat transfer efficiency (Nusselt number) for most of the cases studied. Amongst the four factors considered, the effect of the frequency seems to be the most important.

Keywords: nanofluids; pulsed flow; heat transfer; Nusselt number; Y-type intersection channel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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