The Effect of Local Thermal Nonequilibrium on the Onset of Convection in a Nanofluid

摘要

The onset of convection in a horizontal layer of a nanofluid is studied analytically. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermo-phoresis, and allows for local thermal nonequilibrium (LTNE) between the particle and fluid phases. The analysis reveals that in some circumstances, the effect of LTNE can be significant, but for a typical dilute nanofluid (with large Lewis number and with small particle-to-fluid heat capacity ratio), the effect is small.