Coordinator: Dr. Mohammad Mansur / College of Science   

Abstract:

In the past era, rapid advances in nanotechnology have created quite a lot of prospect for the scientists and engineers to going over. Nanofluid is one of the amazing significances of such advancement. Nanofluids are engineered by suspending nanoparticles in traditional heat transfer fluids. Nanofluids are considered to offer important advantages over conventional heat transfer fluids. Nanofluids have novel properties that make them potentially useful in many applications of heat transfer including microelectronics, automotive, fuel cells, and hybrid-power engines, advanced nuclear systems, and pharmaceutical processes, and nano-drug delivery. They exhibit enhanced thermal conductivity, minimal clogging in flow passage, long term stability and homogeneity compared to the base fluid. Nanoparticles are relatively close in size to the molecules of the base fluid, and thus can realize very stable suspensions with little gravitational settling over long periods of time. Over the years, many industries facing thermal challenges have a pressing need for ultrahigh-performance cooling. Therefore, manufacturers began to employed nanofluids for industrial cooling result in great energy savings and resulting emissions reductions. Because of the wide range of applications of nanofluids significant research interest has been carried out in recent years to the researchers to study heat transfer characteristics of these fluids.

The study of nanofluids provides one of the new challenges for thermo-science. Nanotechnology plays an imperative role in the development of the modern devices for practical use. One very important aspect of nanotechnology concerns the heating, cooling and cleanliness of nano-devices because it is crucial for proper functionality of these thermally sensitive devices. We plan to address this aspect by investigating the convective heat transfer mechanism in nanofluids along with deposition of nanoparticles due to various slip mechanisms with different flow and thermal conditions in numerous geometries. The natural convective flows in nanofluid saturated porous cavities taking into account the Darcy–Boussinesq approximation are also very good and interesting topics for practical applications. The mathematical model governing the nanofluid problem will be examined analytically and/ or simulated numerically. The results will be interpreted physically from engineering view point and their relevant implications need to be identified. 

The research group examines a number of relevant aspects of nanofluids, and this allows the training a number of personnel at different levels of education such as undergraduate, Master and Ph.D. This does not only allow the right number of personnel for executing the project but more importantly it contributes positively to capacity building in this important and topical area of research.