Numerical Investigation of the Water/Alumina Nanofluid within a Microchannel with Baffles

The study of heat transfer phenomenon in microchannels has attracted researchers’ attention as they have many advantages in the cooling of electronic components. In this numerical study, the effect of adding alumina nanoparticles to the water flow through a microchannel with some baffles embedded on the top and bottom walls is numerically discussed by using ANSYS Fluent software. The several cases including the effect of various volume fraction of nanoparticles (2, 4, 6, and 10%), Reynolds number of the inlet flow (10, 20, 30, 40, and 50), and the number of baffles and their heights on the heat transfer phenomena are investigated. The local Nusselt number, the average outlet temperature, and the streamlines are presented for representing the results. The results show that increasing the Reynolds number decreases the average outlet temperature. Moreover, the increase in the number of baffles causes an increase in the average outlet temperature since the formation of vorticities just behind of each baffle and results in a large heat transfer rate. As the baffles height increase, the strength and the area of the vortices increase and hence the heat transfer rate increases. However, an increase in the volume fraction of the nanoparticle increases the average outlet temperature which is due to the increase in conduction heat transfer of nanofluid