International Research Journal of Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 (4) pp. 305-312, April, 2015. © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research paper
Analysis on friction factor and temperature profiles of liquid stream in circular microchannels
*Vankam I. E, Vijay M. I and Nadeem Singh
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India.
E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 19 March, 2015
Abstract
Heat dissipation in electronic components becomes an important issue in efficiency promotion and stable operation. Microchannel heat exchanger plays the major role for heat dissipation from such high heat generating electronic components. In this connection an experimental investigation was conducted to explore the validity of classical correlations of friction factor based on conventional sized channels for predicting the fluid behavior in single-phase water flow through circular microchannels. The microchannels under investigation have the hydraulic diameter of 279 µm and 45 mm long. Test piece was made of stainless steel and the test section contained a total of seventy nine microchannels arranged in circumferential manner. The experiments were conducted with deionized water of Reynolds number ranging from approximately 300 to 3000. Pressure drop and flow rates were measured to analyze the flow characteristics. The results show good agreement between the classical correlations of friction factor and the experimentally measured data. The temperature profiles along as well as across the channels shows that channel length and channel diameter play the major role on its behavior.
Key words: Microchannels, friction factor, temperature profiles.