NUMERICAL STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF NANOPARTICLES ON HEAT TRANSFER IN LAMINAR FLOW SQUARE CHANNEL

Improving heat transfer is nowadays a critical engineering problem for energy efficiency in compact and highperformance systems. This study numerically investigates the effects of nanofluids (NFs) containing aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanoparticles on forced convection heat transfer in a square cross-section channel in the laminar flow regime. The thermal behavior of the NF is simulated with both single-phase and mixture models using the finite difference method in a shifted mesh system. In this study, the Reynolds number and nanoparticle volume fraction are systematically varied to evaluate their effect on the mean Nusselt number. The results obtained show that both parameters significantly increase the heat transfer. The mixture model shows a better agreement with the experimental data due to the consideration of interphase slip and shear effects. Furthermore, the accuracy of the simulations is improved by network independence tests and high-resolution discretization techniques. This study provides a comparative perspective for appropriate model selection in NF applications and provides valuable insights into the design of micro-structured heat transfer systems.