Nanofluid convective heat transfer using semi analytical and numerical approaches: A review

The use of additives in the base fluid like water or ethylene glycol is one of the techniques applied to augment the heat transfer. Newly an innovative nanometer sized particles have been dispersed in the base fluid in heat transfer fluids. The fluids containing the solid nanometer size particle dispersion are called ‘nanofluids’. Two main categories were discussed in detail as the single-phase modeling which the combination of nanoparticle and base fluid is considered as a single-phase mixture with steady properties and the two-phase modeling in which the nanoparticle properties and behaviors are considered separately from the base fluid properties and behaviors. Both single phase and two phase models have been presented in this paper. This paper intends to provide a brief review of researches on nanofluid flow and heat transfer via semi analytical and numerical methods. It was also found that Nusselt number is an increasing function of nanoparticle volume fraction, Rayleigh number and Reynolds number, while it is a decreasing function of Hartmann number.