Dynamical system analysis of thermal convection in a horizontal layer of nanofluids heated from below

Abstract

The effect of nanofluids on chaotic convection in a fluid layer heated from below was studied in this paper for low Prandtl number based on the theory of dynamical systems. A low-dimensional, Lorenz-like model was obtained using Galerkin-truncated approximations. The fourth-order Runge-Kutta method was employed to solve the nonlinear system. The results show that inhibition of chaotic convection can be observed when using nanofluids. © 2012 J. M. Jawdat et al.