In this paper, the thermal expansion characteristics of Al2O3 nanofluids have been studied and compared with the base fluid, i.e., water. The nanoparticles used were in the range of 40–80 nm, which were dispersed in water by sonication. Interestingly, it was found that the volumetric rise of the metallic oxide nanofluids is much larger than water for the corresponding temperature rise, which is opposite to what has been interpreted so far. This is one of the wonderful properties of nanofluids that would find tremendous application in many heat extraction systems using natural convection as mode of heat removal.
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Nayak et al. (2009) studied this question.