On heat transfer in external natural convection flows using two nanofluids

In the present work, a theoretical model based on the integral formalism approach for both laminar and turbulent external natural convection is extended to nanofluids. By using empirical models based on experimental data for computing viscosity and thermal conductivity of water–alumina and water–CuO suspensions, a close attention is first focused on the influence due to increasing the volume fraction of nanoparticles on the heat transfer and then to the transition threshold between laminar and turbulent regimes. The heat transfer is shown to strongly depend on the flow regime and on particle volume fraction. A clear degradation of heat transfer is observed using nanofluids while compared to that of the base-fluid. Moreover, the fact of increasing the particle volume fraction tends to delay the occurrence of the flow transition to turbulence.