Study of Surface roughness and its effect on Nusselt number of circular microchannel

Abstract

To ensure sustainability of energy system and to increase efficiency, miniaturization has been playing a major role these days. In current design scenario, high heat transfer rate using minimum pumping power are very important aspect. With respect to that, microchannel is characterized by flow and heat transfer in confined tiny geometries. This work represents the numerical simulation and analytical calculation performed in circular microchannels in order to study roughness and investigate its effect on the value of Nusselt number. The dataset of the available experimental investigations is cited and the study was performed with water as the working fluid and steel as the working medium while the Reynolds numbers has range from 400 to 3200. The surface roughness is studied that is generated through uniform distribution at the microscale. This research is mostly focused on Nusselt number and the simulation values was found to be 4.059,4.13466,5.08856 for smooth channel, channel with sand grain roughness, regular rough channel respectively. With an average error of 7.5%, the conventional co relation and simulation findings of Nusselt number are in agreement with each other.