Thermal performance comparison of various corrugated channels using nanofluid: Numerical study

Abstract

A numerical simulation is performed on thermal performance comparison of a corrugated channel with three corrugation profiles. Semicircle, trapezoidal, and house shapes are considered as corrugation profiles for corrugated walls of channel using nanoparticles volume fractions of ZnO and Reynolds number ranging from 0 to 0.08 and 10,000–30,000, respectively. The influences of these profiles on heat transfer, pressure drop, streamwise velocity contours, temperature contours, and thermal performance of a corrugated channel are discussed in detail. Moreover, the results of corrugated channel are compared with straight one. Governing equations are discretized by using a finite volume method (FVM) and SIMPLE algorithm. The Nusselt number and pressure drop are about 1–4 times higher for the corrugated channels than for the flat channel, indicating the great effect of the corrugation profile. There are 7.4%, 8.7%, and 4.86% decrements in thermal performance for house shaped, trapezoidal, and semicircle, respectively, at Reynolds number between 10,000 and 30,000. Finally, it was found that among corrugated channels, the trapezoidal channel provides the highest thermal performance followed by the semicircle and house shaped channels.