Numerical investigation of nanoparticles slip mechanisms impact on the natural convection heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids in an enclosure

This study intends to give qualitative results toward the understanding of different slip mechanisms impact on the natural heat transfer performance of nanofluids. The slip mechanisms considered in this study are Brownian diffusion, thermophoretic diffusion, and sedimentation. This study compares three different Eulerian nanofluid models; Single-phase, two-phase, and a third model that consists of incorporating the three slip mechanisms in a two-phase drift-flux. These slip mechanisms are found to have different impacts depending on the nanoparticle concentration, where this effect ranges from negligible to dominant. It has been reported experimentally in the literature that, with high nanoparticle volume fraction the heat transfer deteriorates. Admittingly, classical nanofluid models are known to underpredict this impairment. To address this discrepancy, this study focuses on the effect of thermophoretic diffusion and sedimentation outcome as these two mechanisms turn out to be influencing players in the resulting heat transfer rate using the two-phase model. In particular, the necessity to account for the sedimentation contribution toward qualitative modeling of the heat transfer is highlighted. To this end, correlations relating the thermophoretic and sedimentation coefficients to the nanofluid concentration and Rayleigh number are proposed in this study. Numerical experiments are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed two-phase model in approaching the experimental data, for the full range of Rayleigh number in the laminar flow regime and for nanoparticles concentration of (0% to 3%), with great satisfaction.