This article reports on the International Nanofluid Property Benchmark Exercise, or INPBE, in which the thermal conductivity of identical samples of colloidally stable dispersions of nanoparticles or “nanofluids,” was measured by over 30 organizations worldwide, using a variety of experimental approaches, including the transient hot wire method, steady-state methods, and optical methods. The nanofluids tested in the exercise were comprised of aqueous and nonaqueous basefluids, metal and metal oxide particles, near-spherical and elongated particles, at low and high particle concentrations. The data analysis reveals that the data from most organizations lie within a relatively narrow band (±10% or less) about the sample average with only few outliers. The thermal conductivity of the nanofluids was found to increase with particle concentration and aspect ratio, as expected from classical theory. There are (small) systematic differences in the absolute values of the nanofluid thermal conductivity among the various experimental approaches; however, such differences tend to disappear when the data are normalized to the measured thermal conductivity of the basefluid. The effective medium theory developed for dispersed particles by Maxwell in 1881 and recently generalized by Nan et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 81, 6692 (1997)], was found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, suggesting that no anomalous enhancement of thermal conductivity was achieved in the nanofluids tested in this exercise.

A Benchmark Study on the Thermal Conductivity of Nanofluids

Recent advances in modeling and simulation of nanofluid flows-Part I: Fundamentals and theory

An updated review on application of nanofluids in heat exchangers for saving energy

Investigation of nanofluid mixed convection in a shallow cavity using a two-phase mixture model

Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for nanofluids

Comparative analysis of single and two-phase models for CFD studies of nanofluid heat transfer

Comparative assessment of single and two-phase models for numerical studies of nanofluid turbulent forced convection

Fully developed mixed convection in horizontal and inclined tubes with uniform heat flux using nanofluid

Conductivity values of nanofluids calculated with the model proposed by Nan et al. 1 consistently underestimate the corresponding measured values for 20 sets of experimental data from 12 published studies; thus the conclusion of the recent International Nanofluid Property Benchmark Exercise 2 which stated that it is not necessary to resort to other theories (e.g., Brownian motion, liquid layering, and aggregation) for the interpretation of the INPBE database cannot be generalized. In view of this situation, a new model which takes into account clustering and micro-convection is proposed and compared with experimental data for five nanofluids (with different particle sizes and a range of particle concentrations) as well as two previously published models. The maximum difference between the predictions of the proposed model and the measured values is 6.7% of the latter. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/htj). DOI 10.1002/htj.20350

A new model for nanofluid conductivity based on the effects of clustering due to Brownian motion

The single phase and three different two phase models (Volume of fluid, Mixture and Eulerian) are used to analyse laminar mixed convection flow of Al2 O3 -water nanofluids in a horizontal tube, in order to evaluate their prediction ability. The flow is considered steady and developing. The fluid’s physical properties are temperature dependent whereas those of the solid particles are constant. A uniform heat flux is applied at the fluid-solid interface. Two different Reynolds numbers and three different volume fractions have been considered. The governing three-dimensional partial differential equations are elliptical in all directions and coupled. Predicted convective heat transfer coefficients, velocity, and temperature profiles, as well as secondary flow’s velocity vectors and temperature contours are compared at different axial positions. To validate the comparisons and verify the accuracy of the results, the numerical predictions are compared with corresponding experimental data. There are essentially no differences between the predictions of the two-phase models; however their results are significantly different from those of the single-phase approach. Two-phase model results are closer to the experimental data, but they show an unrealistic increase in heat transfer for small changes of the particle volume fraction. Hydrodynamically, the two-phase and single-phase approaches perform almost the same but their thermal predictions are quite different.Copyright © 2010 by ASME

Mahmood Akbari

Papers

Comparative analysis of single and two-phase models for CFD studies of nanofluid heat transfer

Comparative assessment of single and two-phase models for numerical studies of nanofluid turbulent forced convection

Fully developed mixed convection in horizontal and inclined tubes with uniform heat flux using nanofluid

A new model for nanofluid conductivity based on the effects of clustering due to Brownian motion

Comparison of Single and Two-Phase Models for the Study of Mixed Convection Flows With Nanofluids