Effects of Roughness on Turbulent Flow in Microchannels and Minichannels

The effect of roughness ranging from smooth to 24% relative roughness on laminar flow has been examined in previous works by the authors. It was shown that using a constricted parameter, ε_FP, the laminar results were predicted well in the roughened channels ([1],[2],[3]). For the turbulent regime, Kandlikar et al. [1] proposed a modified Moody diagram by using the same set of constricted parameters, and using the modification of the Colebrook equation. A new roughness parameter ε_FP was shown to accurately portray the roughness effects encountered in laminar flow. In addition, a thorough look at defining surface roughness was given in Young et al. [4]. In this paper, the experimental study has been extended to cover the effects of different roughness features on pressure drop in turbulent flow and to verify the validity of the new parameter set in representing the resulting roughness effects. The range of relative roughness covered is from smooth to 10.38% relative roughness, with Reynolds numbers up to 15,000. It was found that using the same constricted parameters some unique characteristics were noted for turbulent flow over sawtooth roughness elements.