Molecular dynamics simulation of temperature impact on the viscosity of transformer oil-based nanofluids

Abstract

Transformer oil-based nanofluids have gained wide recognition for its higher dielectric strength compared with pure oil. But few researches focus on its thermal capability. In this paper, computational models working on different kinds of nanoclusters in transformer oil fluidic system have been developed at an atomic-molecular level to explore the temperature impact on the systems' viscosity. SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> nanoparticles, Al <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> nanoparticles and ZnO nanoparticles are adopted to modify the transformer oil, and a COMPASS force field was employed to construct the models of transformer oil-based nanofluids. Simulating results show that the viscosities of the pure oil and nanofluids decrease as the temperature increases, but the tendency of viscosity with temperature will not change when the nanoparticles are added. Viscosities of transformer oil-based nanofluids are higher compared with pure oil, and SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> is more suitable as nanoparticle additive. This paper provides a new way to research on thermal and rheological properties of transformer oil-based nanofluids.