Impact analysis of nanoparticle motion mechanisms on the thermal conductivity of nanofluids

Abstract The relative effects of nanoparticle motion mechanisms of dilute suspensions, i.e., Brownian motion, thermo-phoresis and osmo-phoresis, including size dependence, on the thermal conductivity were theoretically investigated. The Brownian motion effect was found to be more significant by factors of O ( 10 6 ) and O ( 10 8 ) when compared to thermo-phoresis and osmo-phoresis, respectively.