Effect of inclination angle on natural convection of nanofluids in a U-shaped cavity

摘要

In this work, the natural convection in a U-shaped enclosure containing CuO-water nanofluid is studied numerically with a special emphasize on the influence of inclination angle. The three walls of the enclosure are at constant hot temperature while the walls of the rib of U-shaped profile are at constant cold temperature. The remaining walls of the U-shape are thermally insulated. The study is parametrically carried out to investigate the influence of aspect ratio (height of cold wall to the length of hot wall), volume fractions of the CuO nanofluid and inclination of the cavity on the velocity and temperature fields for Ra = 10(5) and Pr = 6.2. The study includes four different inclination angles of 0 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees and 135 degrees, three different volume fractions of 0%, 1% and 3% and three different aspect ratios of 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5. The influence of considered parameters on the streamlines, isotherms and mean Nusselt numbers is discussed.