Brownian Dynamics Simulation to Determine the Effective Thermal Conductivity of Nanofluids

Date Published
06/2004
Publication Type
Journal Article
Authors
DOI
10.1063/1.1736319
Abstract

A nanofluid is a fluid containing suspended solid particles, with sizes on the order of nanometers. Normally, nanofluids have higher thermal conductivities than their base fluids. Therefore, it is of interest to predict the effective thermal conductivity of such a nanofluid under different conditions, especially since only limited experimental data are available. We have developed a technique to compute the effective thermal conductivity of a nanofluid using Brownian dynamics simulation, which has the advantage of being computationally less expensive than molecular dynamics, and have coupled that with the equilibrium Green-Kubo method. By comparing the results of our calculation with the available experimental data, we show that our technique predicts the thermal conductivity of nanofluids to a good level of accuracy.

Journal
Journal of Applied Physics
Volume
95
Year of Publication
2004
Issue
11
Pagination
6492–6494
Keywords
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Research Areas
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