Heat transfer enhancement of TiO₂/water nanofluid at laminar and turbulent flows: A numerical approach for evaluating the effect of nanoparticle loadings

Titania-based nanofluid flowing inside a circular tube under the boundary condition of a horizontal uniformly heated wall was investigated numerically for both laminar and turbulent flows. In this work, an innovative numerical method using an Eulerian approach for the two-phase mixture model was used to simulate the flow and convective heat transfer characteristics. The effect of nanoparticle loading and Reynolds number on the flow and heat transfer characteristics was observed. The Reynolds number was 500 and 1200 for laminar flow, while for turbulent flow, the Reynolds number was varied in the range from 4000 to 14,000. A comparison with the established empirical correlations was made. The results clearly showed at the laminar and turbulent flows that the existing nanoparticles provided a considerable enhancement in the convective heat transfer. For laminar flow, the numerical results found that the enhancement in the convective heat transfer coefficient of nanofluids were 4.63, 11.47, and 20.20% for nanoparticle loadings of 0.24, 0.60, and 1.18 vol.%, respectively. On the other hand, for turbulent flow, the corresponding heat transfer increases were 4.04, 10.33, and 21.87%.