| Abstract |
The effective specific heat of several types of nanofluids are measured by transient double hot-wire technique. Sample nanofluids are prepared by suspending 1-5 volume percentages of titanium dioxide (TiO2), aluminium oxide (Al2O3) and aluminium (Al) nanoparticles in various base fluids, such as deionised water, ethylene glycol and engine oil. The effective specific heats of these nanofluids were found to decrease substantially with increased volume fraction of nanoparticles. Besides particle volume fraction, particle materials and base fluids also have influence on the effective specific heat of nanofluids. Except Al/engine oil-based nanofluid, predictions of the effective specific heat of nanofluids by the volume fraction mixture rule-based model showed reasonably good agreement with the experimental results. Based on the calibration results obtained for the base fluids, the measurement error is estimated to be within 2.77\%. |
