The effect of number of nanoparticles on atomic behavior and aggregation of CuO/water nanofluid flow in microchannels using molecular dynamics simulation

A nanofluid (NF) is a mixture of metallic or non-metallic nanoparticles (NPs) suspended in a fluid. The high activity and energy of the surface atoms of NPs cause them to stick together and aggregate in the base fluid (BF). This leads to instability, changes in the NF concentration, and fouling and obstruction of the flow path, which reduces the NF's thermal conductivity (TC). In this study, the effect of copper oxide NPs on atomic behavior and the aggregation procedure in a water/CuO NF flow in a microchannel was explained using a Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation procedure. For this purpose, various physical parameters, such as density, temperature, velocity, aggregation time (AT), and potential energy (PE), were calculated. The results show that after 1 ns, the temperature and PE converged to 300 K and −553088 eV. By CuO NPs number increasing among H2O molecules, the maximum ratio of density, temperature, and V profiles reached 1.60 g/cm3, 0.0122 Å/ps, and 303 values. The aggregation process in simulated NF was varied by these atomic changes. From a numerical point of view, by CuO NPs number increasing from 2 to 3 NPs, the AT reduced by 1.15 ns to 1.01 ns. Furthermore, this atomic evolution was investigated by PE changed from −652411 to −660258 eV.