The Effect of Local Thermal Nonequilibrium on the Onset of Convection in a Nanofluid

The onset of convection in a horizontal layer of a nanofluid is studied analytically. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis, and allows for local thermal nonequilibrium (LTNE) between the particle and fluid phases. The analysis reveals that in some circumstances, the effect of LTNE can be significant, but for a typical dilute nanofluid (with large Lewis number and with small particle-to-fluid heat capacity ratio), the effect is small.