Design and performance of thermal devices are improved by optimizing their geometrical parameters. This study utilized numerical simulation to examine the heat transfer and flow properties of a rectangular corrugated channel at which nanofluid of silicon dioxide (SiO2) and water is flowing. It is determined how the height-to-width ratio (hc/W) and pitch-to-length ratio (pch/L) of a structure affect its thermal and hydraulic properties. The numerical simulations of flow include nanofluids with SiO2-to-water volume fractions of 8% is accomplished by employing the finite volume method (FVM) with SIMPLE algorithm for discretization of the governing equations and coupling of the pressure-velocity system while the k−ε turbulence model was employed to resolve turbulence. The results demonstrate that, in comparison to the (Pch/L) ratio, the (hc/W) ratio has a stronger influence on the enhancement of heat transfer. In reference to the values at minimum Re (Re = 10000), the ratio Pch/L = 0.05 offers the largest increase in Nuav over the Re range by 180.8%. At Reynolds number (Re) 30000, an increase in 99.5% of average Nusselt number (Nuav) is obtained when the (hc/W) ratio is increased from 0.0 to 0.05. The numerical results indicate that the hc/W of 0.05 with a Pch/L of 0.1075 are the optimum parameters and have shown significant improvement in thermal performance criteria (PEC).

Nanofluid flow through non-corrugated and corrugated channels is studied using a two-dimensional (2D) and three dimensions (3D) numerical simplification. Due to the high computational costs of a full 3D grid model, the 2D approach offer a more practical advantage. However, little information about its validity is available. The aim of this study is to explore to which extent 2D simulations can describe the flow within a 3D geometry, and to investigate how effective the commonly used 2D numerical simplification is in nanofluid flow through non-corrugated and corrugated channels. A case study has implemented with 2D and 3D mesh models to compare their results taking into consideration the analysis of heat transfer and pressure drop. A simulation has been carried out using Ansys fluent software to compare the results for different Reynolds Numbers ranges from 10000 to 30000 and different geometries non-corrugated, semicircle and rectangular channels. The results show that for non-corrugated channel there is a slight difference between 2D and 3D results for all Reynolds number ranges, while for both semicircle and rectangular corrugated channels, the difference becomes larger for high Reynold’s Number.