CONVECTIVE HEAT TRANSFER OF LAMINAR, SINGLE-PHASE FLOW IN RANDOMLY ROUGH MICROTUBES

摘要

Convective heat transfer of laminar, single-phase flow in rough microtubes is studied. Wall roughness and slope are assumed to possess Gaussian, isotropic distributions. Fractal concepts are used to model the rough microtube. It is shown that due to the existence of wall roughness, both cross-sectional and inside surface areas are increased. A new concept is defined as a figure of merit for assessing thermal performance of rough microtubes. As a result of increasing roughness, an enhancement is observed in the thermal performance of microtubes. The present model can be extended to analyze other geometries such as rectangular and trapezoidal microchannels.