Parametric Experimental Study of Viscosity of Nanofluids

There is a lot of interest in the research community about nanofluids due to their high thermal conductivity and potential applications as heat transfer fluids, however a systematic investigation on the viscosity of the nanofluids is still lacking from the literature. Any heat transfer enhancement due to force convention, also leads to increase in the pressure drop. Knowledge of the pressure drop is very important to understand the pumping requirements. Pressure drop is directly proportional to the viscosity of the liquid. Addition of nanoparticles will enhance the viscosity of the nanofluids. In this paper experimental results on the viscosity of propylene glycol based nanofluids are reported for various parameters such as nanoparticle size, temperature and volume fraction. Effect of Brownian motion on the viscosity of nanofluids is also explored.