CFD MODELING OF NATURAL CONVECTION HEAT TRANSFER OF TIO2-WATER NANOFLUID IN A CYLINDRICAL CONTAINER

摘要

This work focuses on numerical validation of natural convection heat transfer of TiO2-water nanofluids in a cylindrical container using COMSOL. The main aim of this study is to compare different available approaches to calculate effective thermal conductivity and compare them with experimental data available in the literature. Simulation results show that for considered mixture, average Nusselt number decreases by increasing Rayleigh number and particle volume fraction. It has been found that only one model was able to represent similar trends for given particle volume fractions, compared to experimental results.