Forced Convective Heat Transfer of Nanofluids - A Review of the Recent Literature

The forced convection of fluids has been investigated by numerous researchers, both experimentally and numerically. A good understanding of characteristics of nanofluid flowhas thoroughly been investigated in these studies. Since the nanoparticles behave more like a single-phase fluid than a solid-liquid mixture, it is assumed that nanofluids are ideally suited in the applications as their usage causes little or no penalty in pressure drop. In recent years, many researchers have tried to fill the gaps on this subject in the literature. To meet the demand for improving the performance of heat transfer equipment, re-examination of the individual components is considered to be essential. The addition of the nanoparticles to the base fluid is one of the significant issues for the optimal performance of heat transfer systems. This paper reports on most of the forced convective heat transfer literature occurring both in-tubes and in-channels regarding the use and preparation of nanofluids. The peer reviewed papers published in citation index journals up to 2012 have been selected for review in the paper. Classification of the papers has been performed according to the publication years. The critical information on the theoretical, experimental and numerical works is presented comprehensively for each paper.