Purpose
The purpose of this research is to scrutinize numerically the effect of internally equipped nonuniformly heated plate within wavy cavity on heat transfer enhancement in the case of hybrid nanofluid flow.
Design/methodology/approach
The two-dimensional, steady, laminar, Newtonian and incompressible thermo-fluid flow phenomenon has been investigated numerically using Galerkin method. The considered parameters including number of waves (3–7), nondimensional length of heated plate (0.4–0.8), plate inclination angle (0º–90º), Rayleigh number (103–106) and concentration of nanoparticles (0.0–2.0) have been investigated in combination with involving hybrid nanofluid as a working fluid to augment thermal properties effectively. Two vertical wavy boundaries have low temperature whilst the other horizontal surfaces are adiabatic.
Findings
The Rayleigh number has a moderate impact on the values of Nusselt number, and skin friction parameter varied from 103 to 105 while it strongly affects them for Ra = 106, where Nu is roughly doubled (approximately 200%) in comparison with its value at Ra = 105 for all cases. Stream function is changed by the orientation of heated plate and Ra values, where its maximum value was 12.9 in horizontal position and 13.6 at vertical one. Results indicate a separation from the wavy walls at low Ra which tends to keep stagnation region at the deep parts of corrugated walls contrary the case at high Ra. The behavior of the isotherm contours tends to be distributed more evenly at lower values of Ra and angle of inclination lower than 45º. The resulting properties from mixing two materials for hybrid nanofluid into one base fluid show a good compromise between thermal capacity and heat conductivity, which is improved by 16% that leads to enhanced convective energy transport in the wavy chamber.
Originality/value
The originality of this work is the considered physical phenomenon where an influence of internal nonuniformly heated plate has been studied for the irregular geometry filled with a hybrid nanofluid. Such analysis allows defining the possible heat transfer enhancement for such an irregular cavity and inner heated plate.