Single and two-phase flow pressure drop and heat transfer in a rectangular metallic microchannel

Abstract

Numerical simulations were performed using Fluent 14.5 to investigate single-phase flow and conjugate heat transfer in a rectangular microchannel embedded in a heated copper block with a glass plate on top. The hydraulic diameter of the rectangular channel was 0.561 mm and its length was 62 mm. The working fluid used in this investigation was water and the Reynolds number was varied from 100 to 3000. Three models were investigated namely 2D, 3D thin-wall (heated from the bottom and three side heated) and 3D fully conjugate models. The numerical results were validated using experimental data and existing conventional theory. The experimental data were found to be in excellent agreement with the 3D thin-wall models while it were under predicted using the 3D full conjugate and 2D models. These findings demonstrated that the numerical scheme that was employed is able to provide an accurate simulation of flow and heat transfer in a microchannel. Also, the results demonstrated that there is a significant difference between the 3D thin-wall and fully conjugate models.