An experimental study of flow friction and heat transfer in wavy microchannels with rectangular cross section

Experimental investigation has been conducted on the flow friction and heat transfer in sinusoidal microchannels with rectangular cross sections. The microchannels considered consist of ten identical wavy units with average width of about 205 μm, depth of 404 μm, wavelength of 2.5 mm and wavy amplitude of 0–259 μm. Each test piece is made of copper and contains 60–62 wavy microchannels in parallel. Deionized water is employed as the working fluid and the Reynolds numbers considered range from about 300 to 800. The experimental results, mainly the overall Nusselt number and friction factor, for wavy microchannels are compared with those of straight baseline channels with the same cross section and footprint length. It is found that the heat transfer performance of the present wavy microchannels is much better than that of straight baseline microchannels; at the same time the pressure drop penalty of the present wavy microchannels can be much smaller than the heat transfer enhancement. Conjugate simulation based on the classical continuum approach is also carried out for similar experimental conditions, the numerical results agree reasonably well with experimental data.

► Experiments on flow friction and heat transfer in sinusoidal microchannels.
► Liquid cooling at moderate Reynolds numbers.
► Significant enhancement in heat transfer with moderate increase in pressure drop.
► Results from conjugate simulation agree well with experiments.
► Flow field analysis shows Dean vortex and chaotic advection.