Magnetohydrodynamic mixed convection in a nanofluid filled tubular enclosure

Mixed convection flow in a tubular enclosure filled with nanofluid in the presence of a magnetic field is numerically investigated in the present study. The bottom and top curved wall of the enclosure are respectively kept isothermally hot and cool while the remaining walls are insulated. The governing equations are formulated based on Boussinesq assumptions and solved with finite element method. The computation is carried out for mixed convection regime (0.1 ≤ Ri ≤ 10) and also natural convection regime (10 < Ri ≤ 100) with fixed values of remaining parameters. A detailed parametric discussion is presented for the physical properties of flow and temperature distributions in terms of streamlines, isotherms, average heat transfer rate within the flow domain. The results show that the flow and temperature fields affected by varying of pertinent parameters. Moreover, heat transfer rate is increased by 139.50% with the increase in Richardson number from 0.1 to 100. The increasing rate of heat transfer due to Ri is respectively decreased by 58.11% with varying of Ha from 0 to 60 and increased by 23.97% with the addition of nanoparticles up to 3%. Comparison is performed against the previously published results on the basis of special cases and found to be in excellent agreement.