Impact of a helical-twisting device on the thermal–hydraulic performance of a nanofluid flow through a tube

Creating greater thermal efficiency is desirable yet challenging in many industrial applications. Employing nanofluids for increasing the thermal behavior of the working fluid and consequently the overall heat transfer rate is an interesting solution that has widely been studied in the literature. This study, however, proposes the use of a special geometry of disturber (i.e., a helical-twisting shape) for a circular duct with nanofluid (water–CuO) as the heat transfer medium and a forced convective flow for this objective. To assess the effect of this instrument, FVM is employed to simulate the hydrothermal performance of the flow through the duct and the disturber. The main parameters of the study include the effects of the width of the disturber blade and inlet velocity on Darcy factor and the heat transfer coefficient. The homogenous model was used for the properties of nanomaterial. The results of the simulations show that better turbulence, i.e., a greater performance, is observed as the width of the flow disturber blade increases and the Reynolds number picks up.