Experimental Research on Thermal Conductivity of Metal-Oxide Nanofluids

Nanofluid is a kind of new engineering material consisting of nanometer-sized particles dispersed in base fluid. In this study, the thermal conductivity of four kinds of nanofluids is measured by the transient hot-wire method. The thermal conductivity of nanofluids is not only influenced by volume fraction of nanoparticles, but also by other factors such as diameter and suspension stability of nanoparticles and the temperature. The experimental results show that nanofluids have substantially higher thermal conductivity than the same liquids without nanoparticles.