Numerical Investigation of Nanofluid Thermocapillary Convection Based on Two-Phase Mixture Model

Numerical investigation of nanofluid thermocapillary convection in a two-dimensional rectangular cavity was carried out, in which the two-phase mixture model was used to simulate the nanoparticles-fluid mixture flow, and the influences of volume fraction of nanoparticles on the flow characteristics and heat transfer performance were discussed. The results show that, with the increase of nanoparticle volume fraction, thermocapillary convection intensity weakens gradually, and the heat conduction effect strengthens; meanwhile, the temperature gradient at free surface increases but the free surface velocity decreases gradually. The average Nusselt number of hot wall and the total entropy generation decrease with nanoparticle volume fraction increasing.