Scaling of Transient Particle-Fluid Heat Transfer in Brownian Motion

摘要

NANOFLUIDS, or fluids with nanoscale particles, offernenhanced heat transfer compared with other fluids [1–3]. Theneffective thermal conductivity appears to increase with temperaturenand particle concentration, and decrease with particle size. There isnconsiderable controversy over the mechanisms involved, withnenhanced particle-fluid heat transfer [4,5], Brownian motion [6–10],nand particle interactions at the boundary [11] held up as potentialnexplanations. The present work models the transient heat transfernbetween nanoparticles and the surrounding fluid, providing annestimate of the time scale required to reach equilibrium.