Natural convection from heated fin shapes in a nanofluid-filled porous cavity using incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to focus on the numerical simulation of natural convection from heated novel fin shapes in a cavity filled with nanofluid and saturated with a partial layer of porous medium using improved incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method.

Design/methodology/approach

The dimensionless of Lagrangian description for the governing equations were numerically solved using improved ISPH method. The current ISPH method was improved in term of wall boundary treatment by using renormalization kernel function. The effects of different novel heated (Tree, T, H, V, and Z) fin shapes, Rayleigh number Ra(10³ – 10⁶ ), porous height H_p (0.2-0.6), Darcy parameter Da(10⁻⁵ − 10⁻¹ ) and solid volume fraction ϕ(0.0-0.05) on the heat transfer of nanofluid have been investigated.

Findings

The results showed that the variation on the heated novel fin shapes gives a suitable choice for enhancement heat transfer inside multi-layer porous cavity. Among all fin shapes, the H-fin shape causes the maximum stream function and Z-fin shape causes the highest value of average Nusselt number. The concentrations of the fluid flows in the nanofluid region depend on the Rayleigh and Darcy parameters. In addition, the penetrations of the fluid flows through porous layers are affected by porous heights and Darcy parameter.

Originality/value

Natural convection from novel heated fins in a cavity filled with nanofluid and saturated with a partial layer of porous medium have been investigated numerically using improved ISPH method.

Citation

Aly, A.M., Raizah, Z. and Asai, M. (2019), "Natural convection from heated fin shapes in a nanofluid-filled porous cavity using incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 29 No. 12, pp. 4569-4597. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-03-2019-0270