Viscosity and Rheological Behavior of Ethylene Glycol-Maghemite Nanofluids

Abstract

This work is devoted on the rheological behavior of ethylene glycol based nanofluids containing maghemtite nanoparticles. The size of these maghemite nanoparticles was measured using XRD and found to be about <50 nm. Major factors that influence on viscosity and rheological behavior, such as, temperature and particle mass concentration, were investigated over 25–80°C and 0.2 and 2% respectively. It was found that the nanofluids show shear-thinning behavior particularly at particle concentrations in excess of 0.2%. Temperature imposes a very strong effect on the rheological behavior of the nanofluids at higher temperatures. For a given particle concentration, there exists a certain shear rate below which the viscosity decreases by increasing the temperature.