Surface Roughness Effects on Heat Transfer in Microscale Single Phase Flow: A Critical Review

There has been increasing interest in research regarding microscale transport phenomena over the past decade. The increased surface area to volume ratio of a microchannel presents enhanced heat transfer characteristics when compared to conventional channels. For this reason, there has been heightened interest in the use of microchannels to meet the high heat dissipation demands of electronics. The fundamental understanding of microscale transport phenomena is an increasingly important area of research, and one area where such understanding is lacking is the effects of surface roughness on transport phenomena. There is very little published literature discussing the effects of surface roughness on the heat transfer characteristics of microchannels, and what literature exists exhibits discrepancies between experimental results. This paper serves as a critical review of literature from 2000 to the present, both experimental and theoretical, involving surface roughness effects on heat transfer in microscale transport phenomena.