Numerical investigations of developing flow and heat transfer in raccoon type microchannels under inlet pulsation

The present study investigates numerically the simultaneously developing unsteady laminar fluid flow and heat transfer inside a two dimensional wavy microchannel caused by a sinusoidal varying velocity component at an inlet. The flow was both thermally and hydro dynamically developing while the channel walls were kept at a uniform temperature. The simulation was performed in the laminar regime for Prandtl number 7(water) and Reynolds number ranging from 0.1 to 100. A Wavy microchannel having non-dimensional hydraulic diameter 1 with varying pulsating amplitude and frequency represented by the Strouhal number was designed for the given Reynolds number range. Based on the comparison with steady flow in a wavy channel it was found that imposed sinusoidal velocity at the inlet can provide improved heat transfer performance at different amplitudes (0.2, 0.5, 0.8) and frequencies (1, 5, 10) while keeping the pressure drop within acceptable limits.