Investigations of thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids

A combined experimental and theoretical study on the effective thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids is conducted. The thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids are measured and found to be substantially higher than the values of the base fluids. Both the thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids increase with the nanoparticle volume fraction. The thermal conductivity of nanofluids was also observed to be strongly dependent on temperature. Two static mechanisms-based models are presented to predict the enhanced thermal conductivity of nanofluids having spherical and cylindrical nanoparticles. The proposed models show reasonably good agreement with the experimental results and give better predictions for the effective thermal conductivity of nanofluids compared to existing classical models. Based on the calibration results from the transient hot-wire method, the measurement error was estimated to be within 2%. In addition, the measured values of the effective viscosity of nanofluids are found to be underestimated by classical models.