Free convection of hybrid water/aluminum oxide-copper nanofluid in cubic cavity

Convective heat transfer is a physical phenomenon that continues to attract the interest of researchers in many fields of science and engineering. This work aims at numerically investigating the enhancement of heat transfer in a differentially heated three-dimensional cavity using a hybrid Al2O3-Cu-water nanofluid and Al2O3-water nanofluid. The partial differential equations are discretized in 3D by adopting the finite volume method and using the SIMPLEC algorithm for pressure correction. Heat transfer and fluid flow results are presented in the form of isotherms, velocity fields and mean Nusselt number. The results show that the effect of nanofluid and hybrid nanofluid on natural convection is more significant when the Rayleigh number is high. The use of hybrid nanofluid improves the heat transfer compared to nanofluid.