Application of lattice Boltzmann method for simulating nanofluids

A suspension of ultrafine particles in a fluid base that leads to little or no penalty in pressure drop called 'nanofluid'. Therefore, it is distinguishable from adding suspended solid particles in order of millimeters or micrometers into the fluid, because they may cause some severe problems, such as clogging of the flow in the channels, settling the particles rapidly and pressure drop. Recently, nanofluids are considered in fluid mechanicsfor their great potential for heat transfer enhancement than the traditional solid-liquid mixture. Inherent irregular and Brownian motion of nanofluids makes traditional theoretical methods such as Navier-Stokes fail to simulate the flow and energy field. In this paper, the lattice Boltzmann methodintroduced as a powerful technique to simulating the nanofluids even in complex geometries. Moreover, the strength of the lattice Boltzmann method is its computational simplicity and its locality.

Keywords:

nanofluid , lattice Boltzmann method , velocity distribution function