Numerical Simulation of Steady State Heat Transfer in a Microchannel With Obstruction

Effects of obstructions on the heat transfer in a microtube and a two-dimensional microchannel were investigated. The obstructions normally arise during the fabrication process on the inner surface of the microtube or microchannel. Various shapes and sizes of the obstruction were considered. The shapes that were modeled were rectangular, triangular, and semicircular obstructions. Calculations were done for incompressible flow of a Newtonian fluid with developing momentum and thermal boundary layers. Equations governing the conservation of mass, momentum and energy were solved for an isothermal condition at the wall. Comparison with no obstruction case was made. It was found that for microtubes, the local Nusselt number increases significantly at the obstruction whereas the average Nusselt number for the whole tube comes out somewhat lower. For two-dimensional microchannels, both local Nusselt number at the obstruction as well as average Nusselt number for the entire tube came out to be higher. The working fluids that were investigated were water and refrigerant R-134a. The results presented in the paper demonstrates that in microchannels and microtubes that are widely used in micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), small defects in the fabrication process may lead to large changes in local as well as global performance of the device.