NUMERICAL STUDY OF NANOFLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN MICROCHANNELS

It is known that the metal nanoparticles,when dispersed in fluids to form nanofluids, improve the heat conductivity of the fluids. The present paper studies the flow and heat transfer ofthe nanofluids in a microchannel by using Computational Fluid Dynamic method. It is found that although the nanoparticles enhance the heattransfer of the fluids about certain percent, the nanoparticles also cause a big increase of viscous shear stress on the wall, which causes an increaseof the power consumption for driving the nanofluids through the microchannel

Keywords:

Nanofluids , computational fluid dynamics , microfluidics , heat transfer