Numerical and Experimental Investigations of Momentum and Heat Transfer in Microchannels

The paper presents the results of a research performed during recent years at LEGI Grenoble with joint participation of CzUT researchers. The special attention is devoted to experimental and numerical studies devoted to three cases involving various aspects of microchannel flow physics (range of microchannel sizes corresponds to the classification of Kandlikar [19]). The first aspect is related to hydraulic properties of a network of parallel triangular microchannels, where experimental investigations revealed the rapid increase of pressure drop for Re exceeding value of 10. The second aspect of the research was the influence of surface roughness, which was investigated both experimentally and numerically for periodically and randomly distributed surface elements. The third research case was devoted to the numerical modelling of heat transfer. As a result, experimental and numerical analyses showed that there was no scale effect for the microchannels considered, i.e. the relevance of the classical continuum flow model was confirmed.