Particulate Science and Technology, Vol.36, No.1, 84-90, 2018
A numerical study on heat transfer of the nanofluid flow inside helical tube through the two-phase method
In this study, a new numerical investigation was carried out to study the heat transfer characteristics of nanofluid flow inside a copper helical tube under constant heat flux. A nanofluid with different particle weight concentrations of 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.0% was used. The effects of different parameters such as Reynolds number, nanofluid particle concentration, and constant heat fluxes (1500 and 3800 W/m(2)) on heat transfer coefficient were studied. For validation, Nusselt number and convection heat transfer coefficient obtained from the numerical model was compared with the experimental results. Also, to verify the accuracy of the method, grid independency was studied for each heat flux. The observations showed that the heat transfer coefficient increased by using nanofluid instead of base fluid. In addition, the convection heat transfer coefficient performance improved by increasing the nanoparticles' concentration. The results from the numerical simulation compared with the experimental data showed that this new numerical method has high accuracy and could correctly predict the heat transfer behavior of nanofluids with different weight particle concentrations under constant heat flux.