NATURAL CONVECTION OF NANOFLUIDS IN HEATED ENCLOSURES USING THE LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD

The lattice Boltzmann method applied on two-dimensional Cartesian meshes has been used to investigate the solution of the natural convection of nanofluids in shallow cavities. This kind of flow problem was implemented to solve temperature, vorticity, and stream function equations under the Boussinesq approximation, with a specific treatment for nanoparticles. Validations were first conducted by studying the natural convection of ordinary fluids in square cavities for a range of Rayleigh numbers between 103 and 106 with a Prandtl number of 0.71. The results were compared with data available in the literature. Once satisfactory results were found for this test problem, the lattice Boltzmann formulation was applied to study natural convection involving nanofluids. The influence of nanoparticles on convectional flows in shallow cavities heated from below was simulated for various Rayleigh numbers. This study was conducted with water-based nanofluids for different kinds and various ratios of nanoparticles. Good agreement was found when these results were compared with analytical data given in the literature.