A review of heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of single and two-phase microchannels

An impressive amount of investigations has been devoted to enhancing thermal performance of microchannels. The small size of microchannels and their ability to dissipate heat makes them as one of the best choices for the electronic cooling systems. In this paper, a comprehensive review of available studies regarding single and two-phase microchannels is presented and analyzed. 219 articles are reviewed to identify the heat transfer mechanisms and pressure drops in microchannels. This review looks into the different methodologies and correlations used to predict the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of microchannels along the channel geometries and flow regimes. The review shows that earlier studies (from 1982 to 2002) were largely conducted using experimental approaches, and discrepancies between analytical and experimental results were large, while more recent studies (from 2003 to 2013) used numerical simulations, correlations for predicting pressure drop and heat transfer coefficients were considerably more accurate.