Hydrodynamic and thermal modeling of nanofluid flow in a uniformly heated circular pipe is considered using single-phase models. Various single-phase models relying on Brownian and dispersion viscosity models are evaluated by comparing heat transfer coefficient, Nusselt number and friction factor with experimental results from literature. Single-phase models are capable of predicting heat transfer of nanofluids better when dispersion models are used. However, they fail to accurately predict surface shear stress when used with standard viscosity models. A new viscosity model based on dispersion viscosity is proposed to improve prediction accuracy of single-phase models for estimating the surface shear stress of laminar nanofluid flow. Results suggest that proposed single-phase dispersion model is capable of accurately predicting heat transfer coefficient and friction factor. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.