Investigation of Convective Heat Transfer in Nanofluids by Finite Element analysis

Nanofluids are considered to offer important advantages over conventional heat transfer fluids. In the present paper the governing continuity, momentum and energy equations for pure water and water based alumina nanofluid flowing on a semi-infinite slab has been solved, applying finite element by Ritz-Galerkin approach. Compared with water, the heat transfer behavior of nanofluid showed a considerable enhancement in convective heat transfer with increasing particle volume fraction of nanofluid. If the particle volume fraction is increased to 5%, the rate of heattransfer increases almost 9% compared with that of pure water, which is in good agreement with numerical solutions.

Keywords:

Convective Heat Transfer , Nanofluid , Finite Element