Experimental Study on Single Phase Flow in Microchannels at High Mass Flow Rates

With the increasing speed and decreasing size of current microprocessors and microchips the dimensions of their heat sinks are continuously shrinking from mini size to micro size. The most extensively used and practical micro heat sinks are plain microchannels which find applications in many areas besides electronics cooling such as in microreactors, fuel cells, drug delivery, micropropulsion and automotive industry. Because of their widespread usage, they attracted the attention of many researchers, which gave rise to many studies on single-phase as well as on flow boiling. The proposed study aims at filling the gap in heat and fluid flow in microchannels at high mass velocities in the literature. For this purpose single-phase fluid (de-ionized water) flow was investigated over a broad range of mass velocity (1300 kg/m²s-7200 kg/m²s) in a microtube with an inner diameter of ∼ 250 μm. Besides comparing the experimental results in fully developed flow to the theory, the focus of this study is on thermally developing flows. Wall temperatures and pressure drops were measured and processed to obtain heat transfer coefficients, Nusselt numbers and friction factors. It was found that the existing theory about developing flows could fairly predict experimental data on developing flows in microscale for both laminar and turbulent conditions.