Investigation of heat transfer in turbulent nanofluids using direct numerical simulations

A numerical study has been performed by using a combined Euler and Lagrangian method on the convective heat transfer of Cu and Al2 O3 nanofluids under the turbulent flow conditions. The effects of volume fraction of nanoparticles, nanoparticle sizes, and nanoparticle material are investigated. The mechanism of convective heat transfer enhancement in nanofluids has also been investigated, by studying the influence of particle dispersion and two-way interaction between fluid and particle temperature. The results show significant enhancement of heat transfer of nanofluids. The numerical data are compared with the correlation data of the experiments and reasonably good agreement is achieved.