Modeling of Nanofluid Flows. Problems, Methods, Results

The methods of the nanofluid flows modeling are analyzed. In the first part of the paper, methods for simulating flows of gas nanosuspensions are systematically considered. It is shown when they should be described by kinetic or continuum equations. Particular attention is paid to situations in which the nanofluid flows need to be described by a mixed kinetic-hydrodynamic method. In the second part the thermophysical properties (viscosity and thermal conductivity) of nanofluids are discussed in detailed. It was shown that the transport coefficients of nanofluids depend not only on the volume concentration of the particles but also on their size and material. The viscosity increases with decreasing the particle size while the thermal conductivity increases with increasing the particle size. The last part of the paper deals with modeling the mixing in micromixure and convection heat transfer in the tube. In conclusion, we discuss the applicability of various commonly used similarity criteria, such as Reynolds, Prandtl, and Nusselt numbers, etc. for modeling nanofluid flows.