• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.60-65
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• 2019

Since nanofluids (NFs), which are a mixture of a small amount of nanoparticles and a bulk liquid solvent, were first proposed by Stephen Choi at the Argonne National Lab in 1995, they have been considered for use in many technical studies of power cooling systems and their practical application due to their high thermal conductivity and heat transfer coefficients compared to conventional coolants. Although nanofluids are a well-known form of engineering fluid that show great promise for use in future cooling systems, their underlying physics as demonstrated in experiments remain unclear. One proven method of determining the heat transfer performance of nanofluids is measuring the concentration of nanoparticles in a mixture. However, it is experimentally inefficient to build testbeds to systematically observe particle distributions on a nanoscale. In this paper, we demonstrate the distribution of nanoparticles under a temperature gradient in a solution using molecular dynamics simulations. First, temperature profiles based on substrate temperature are introduced. Following this, the radial pair distribution functions of pairs of nanoparticles, solvents, and substrates are calculated. Finally, the distribution of nanoparticles in different heating regions is determined.