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The present work provides an empirical investigation on the thermal characteristics of Ag/oil nanofluids flow inside a sinusoidal tube under a constant heat flux boundary condition. Ag/oil nanofluids have been prepared in low-volume concentrations of 0.011%, 0.044%, and 0.171%. The average size of the nanoparticles was 20 nm. A heated coil was attached to the upper and lower surface of the tube that satisfied the constant thermal boundary condition of 204 W. The experiment has been pursued at low Reynolds numbers less than 160. A loop was designed to keep the flow hydrodynamically fully developed during the experiment. The test case was a sinusoidal tube. Upper and lower surfaces of the tube have been designed sinusoidally. Moreover, the width of the plates was long enough, so the problem was not considerably affected by the three-dimensional releasing effect. Convective heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number were calculated. It has been observed that based on the acquired data of the present work, convective heat transfer coefficient increased up to 23% for the best case (nanofluid with a volume concentration of 0.171%) compared to the base fluid. This happened while the rise of the friction factor was very low. In addition, a comparison between the new results and the previous work by authors showed the positive performance of sinusoidal tubes in increasing the convective heat transfer coefficient (the average increase was calculated to be about 82%) compared to the annular tube. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heat transfer and flow characteristics of Cu-heat transfer oil nanofluid during mixed convection through horizontal annular tubes under uniform heat flux as boundary condition are investigated experimentally. Data were acquired at low Reynolds number ranged from about 26 to 252. The applied nanofluid prepared by Electrical Explosion of Wire technique with no nanoparticles agglomeration during nanofluid preparation process and experiments. Pure heat transfer oil and nanofluids with nanoparticles weight concentrations of 0.12, 0.36 and 0.72% were used as the working fluids. Based on these results, Effects of nanoparticles concentration, heat flux and free convection on the thermal field development are studied under buoyancy assisted flow condition for Grashof number, Richardson number between 2820 and 12,686, and 0.1-10, respectively. Results show that Nusselt number increases with an increase of nanoparticles weight concentrations from 0 to 0.72% under certain Richardson numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]