Numerical Study of the Effect of the Nanofluids Type and The Size of the Heating Sections on Heat Transfer for Cooling Electronic Components

Abstract

The present work consists of analysing heat exchange by natural convection. The intensification of these exchanges and the improvement of efficiency have become a major issue in the industrial world today. This paper is part of this framework, and is particularly concerned with problems related to the intensification of heat exchanges in electronic components. Our objective is to understand the effect of the nanofluid on the mechanism of natural laminar convection in a three-dimensional cavity. In this context, we have developed our own computational code and conducted a parametric study looking at thermomechanical and geometrical parameters. The fluid flow and heat transfer in the cavity are studied for different sets of the governing parameters, namely the Rayleigh number Ra = 103 ,104 ,105 and 106 , volume fraction Ф varying between Ф = 0% and 10% and nanofluid type. The obtained results show a positive effect of the volume fraction and the Rayleigh number on the heat transfer improvement. It should also be noted that the increase of the heating section size and Ra results in increased amount of heat removed by the same nanofluid. Similarly, increasing the volume fraction causes the intensification of the flow and an increase of the heat exchange.