Numerical investigations of heat transfer enhancement in a house shapedcorrugated channel: combination of nanofluid and geometrical parameters

• Main Authors: K. Ajeel, Raheem, W. Salim, W.S-I., Hasnan, Khalid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020
• Subjects: TH Building construction
• Online Access: http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/6548/1/AJ%202020%20%28345%29.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/6548/; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsep.2019.100376

Improving the heat transfer rate is one of the main issues at the design stage of different thermal devices for various industries. In this research, a numerical simulation is performed to investigate the combined influences of nanofluid and various parameters designs of a house-shaped corrugated channel on the thermal and hydraulic performance under uniform heat flux of 10 kW/m2 and Reynolds number range of 10,000–30,000. In respect to the fluid medium, SiO2 nanoparticles are used and investigated with volume fraction up to 0.08. The impacts of geometrical parameters including height-to-width ratio (h/W), pitch-to-length ratio (p/L), and house ratio (e/r) on thermal and hydraulic characteristics are evaluated. The findings show that the (h/W) ratio has more influence on heat transfer promotion than the (p/L) ratio. At Reynolds number 30,000, there is a 16.63% increment in average Nusselt number due to a decrease of the (p/L) ratio from 0.175 to 0.075, while the increment 92.28% is achieved by an increase of the (h/W) ratio from 0.0 to 0.05. Heat transfer increases with roof height (r) and decreases with the vertical height of the house-shaped corrugation (e). The findings detect that a h/W of 0.05 with a p/L of 0.075 and e/r=0.6667 are optimum parameters that showed significant improvement in thermal performance. Moreover, new correlations for the Nusselt number and friction factor were developed and reported. Using nanofluid with the current channel is a useful source of reference to enhance thermal performance and produce more compact heat exchangers.