Author

Abstract

A numerical study has been carried out to investigate the heat transfer by natural convection of nanofluid taking copper as nano particles and the water as based fluid in a three dimensional annulus enclosure filled with porous media between two horizontal concentric cylinders with 12 annular fins of 3mm length and 2.4 mm thickness attached to the inner cylinder under steady state condition and different wall temperature boundary conditions. The governing equations which used are continuity, momentum and energy equations under an assumptions used Darcy law and Boussinesq’s approximation which are transformed to dimensionless equations. The finite difference approach is used to obtain all the computational results using the MATLAB- 7. The parameters affected on the system are modified Rayleigh number (10 ≤Ra*≤ 500), radius ratio Rr (0.293, 0.365 and 0.435) and the volume fraction . The results show that, increasing of fin length decreases the heat transfer rate and for Ra*<100, decreasing Rr cause to decrease Nu and adding Cu nanoparticles with φ= 0.35 cause 27.9% enhancement in heat transfer. A correlation for Nu in terms of Ra, Hf and φ, has been developed for inner hot cylinder.

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