A rheological approach to investigate the shear rate effect on the viscosity of silicon carbide/engine coolant nanofluids

Cooling and lubricating are important in many industries, especially in transportation and energy production. Nanofluids are designed by adding nanoscale particles in low volumetric fractions to afluid in order to enhance or improve its rheological, mechanical, optical, and thermal properties.The liquid phase can be any liquid such as oil, water, ethylene glycol, or conventional fluidmixtures. The present paper, describes our experimental results on the viscosity of the nanofluidprepared by dispersing SiC nanoparticles (<100 nm) in commercial car coolant. The viscosity of the nanofluids is measured both as a function of SiC volume fraction and temperature between 10°C and 60°C. While the pure base fluid display Newtonian behavior over the measuredtemperature, it transforms to a non-Newtonian fluid with addition of a small amount of SiC nanoparticles. The temperature dependence of the viscosity of engine coolant based SiC nanofluids obeys the empirical correlation of the type: log (?f) = A exp (BT), proposed earlier by Namburu et al

Keywords:

Engine coolant , SiC , Viscosity , Nanofluid , Shear rate , Curve fitting