Characteristics of flow and heat transfer of nanofluids under laminar states

The current article used four different models (single-phase, Mixture, Eulerian, and discrete phase model) to investigate the flow and heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids under a laminar state. We explored the Al2O3-water nanofluid inside a microscale trapezoidal channel and the CuO-oil inside a circular channel with a regular size. The velocity and temperature fields of nanofluids were discussed by comparing the differences among each model. It is revealed that the change of flow characteristics of nanofluid plays a more decisive role in its heat transfer enhancement besides the improvement of its physical properties.