Optimization of Cooling Ducts in Nanofluid-Filled Power Transformer Windings

Cooling ducts in nanofluid-filled power transformers are optimized to minimize the hot-spot temperature using computational fluid dynamics and genetic algorithm. Numerical results of oil-immersed power transformer windings are used to conduct the code and grid-independence validation. Two-phase mixture model combined with coupled solver is adopted to solve this problem. Optimized result of nanofluid-filled windings is compared with that of oil-immersed windings to showcase the heat transfer improvement of nanofluid.