Natural Convection of Water-based Nanofluids in a Square Cavity with Partially Heated of the Bottom Wall

Abstract Numerical study of natural convection of water-based nanofluids in a square cavity with partially heated at the bottom wall and filled with nanofluids is carried out using different types of nanoparticles. The remaining wall of this enclosure is kept at cold temperature. The numerical procedure used in this work is based on the Galerkin weighted residual method of finite element formulation. Calculation are performed for Rayleigh numbers in the range 103 -106 and different solid volume fraction of nanoparticles 0 ≤ φ ≤ 0.2. An enhancement in heat transfer rate is observed with the increase of nanoparticles volume fraction for the whole range of Rayleigh numbers. It is observed that the heat transfer enhancement strongly depends on the type of nanofluids.