Computational study of the application of Al2O3nanoparticles to forced convection of high-Reynolds swirling jets for engineering cooling processes

Numerical modeling of turbulent impinging swirling jets involve complex flow physics that make their computation still very challenging. Thus, the literature on computational modeling of these nanofluid jets is really scarce, with most works on laminar impinging nanofluid jets or turbulent swirling/non-swirling air or water-only jets. In this paper a computational analysis of different configurations in the application of nanoparticles to submerged high-Reynolds turbulent jet flows for cooling purposes is developed. Six volume fractions have been investigated (and , which correspond to a Prandtl number of the nanofluid within the range ) along with two nozzle-to-plate distances (and 4) and several swirl numbers (, , , , and ). The jet regime is fixed at a Reynolds number . The computational study shows that the application of nanoparticles enhances forced convection for all the simulations carried out. However, the influence of swirl number and nozzle-to-plate distance is not that clear. Variations cause different effects on the performance. For instance, to vary the swirl intensity at large nozzle-to-plate separation has different effect than in short separations. Also, some ranges of variation of swirl may enhance heat transfer whilst others may worsen it.