Numerical Investigation of Slip Flow and Heat Transfer in Rotating Rectangular Microchannels

Investigation of fluid flow and heat transfer in rotating microchannels is important for centrifugal microfluidics, which has emerged as an advanced technique in biomedical applications and chemical separations. The pseudo forces namely the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force arising as a consequence of the rotating reference frame change the flow pattern significantly from the parabolic profile in a non-rotating channel. The convective heat transfer process is also influenced by the secondary flow introduced by the rotational effect. Moreover, if the microchannel wall is hydrophobic, slip flow can occur inside the channel when the conventional no slip boundary condition is no longer valid. In this work, we have numerically investigated the flow and heat transfer inside a straight rotating rectangular microchannel in the slip flow regime. A pressure based finite volume technique in a staggered grid was applied to solve the steady incompressible Navier-Stokes and energy equations. It has been observed that, depending on the rotational velocity, different slip velocities are induced at the channel walls. The average fluid temperature increases with the increase of rotation as convective heat transfer mechanism is increased due to the secondary flow. However, the slip boundary condition has a negligible effect on the temperature profiles.