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CFD Study of Variable Property Effects on Laminar Micro-convective Heat Transfer

  • Research Article - Mechanical Engineering
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Abstract

Compact heat exchangers are of great technological importance in many industries such as automotive, submarine and spacecraft industry. Micro-channel cooling is an area which is providing a new platform for the development of these compact heat exchange devices. Micro-channel flows and heat transfer characteristics are different from what is usually observed in macrochannel flows. In the present work, computational fluid dynamics is used as a tool to study the influence of variable thermophysical properties on the Nusselt number, skin friction and pressure drop for different channel diameter, fluid inlet velocities, and heat fluxes. The Nusselt number and pressure drop is found to be higher for variable properties as compared to constant properties for an increase in diameters, inlet velocities, and heat fluxes.

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Abbreviations

\(C_\mathrm{f}\) :

Skin friction coefficient (–)

\(C_{p}(T)\) :

Temperature-dependent specific heat capacity (J kg\(^{-1}\) K\(^{-1}\))

D :

Pipe diameter (m)

\(f_\mathrm{D}\) :

Darcy friction factor (–)

h :

Heat transfer coefficient (W m\(^{-2}\) K\(^{-1}\))

k(T) :

Temperature-dependent thermal conductivity (W m\(^{-1}\) K\(^{-1}\))

L :

Length of micro-tube (m)

\(q_\mathrm{w}\) :

Constant wall heat flux (W cm\(^{-2}\))

r, z :

Radial and axial cylindrical coordinate (m)

R :

Pipe radius (m)

Re :

Reynolds number (–)

\(T_\mathrm{m}\) :

Bulk mean temperature (K)

\(T_\mathrm{w}\) :

Wall temperature (K)

\(T_\mathrm{in}\) :

Inlet temperature (K)

\(T_\mathrm{out}\) :

Outlet temperature (K)

\(u_\mathrm{in}\) :

Inlet velocity (ms\(^{-1}\))

\(u_\mathrm{m}\) :

Bulk mean velocity (ms\(^{-1}\))

\({\rho (T)}\) :

Temperature-dependent density (Kg m\(^{-3}\))

\({\mu (T)}\) :

Temperature-dependent viscosity (Ns m\(^{-2}\))

\({\mu }\) :

Micrometers (\(= 10^{-6}\) m)

CP :

Constant properties

e :

Exit

VP :

Variable properties

m :

Mean value

w :

Wall

in :

Inlet

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the High-Performance Aziz Supercomputing center team (http://hpc.kau.edu.sa) and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah for providing necessary facilities to carry out the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aeronautical Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 21589, Saudi Arabia

    Amjad Ali Pasha, M. Abdul Raheem, K. A. Juhany & A. Mushtaq

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 21589, Saudi Arabia

    N. Islam

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, 400076, India

    S. S. Halkarni

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  1. Amjad Ali Pasha
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  2. M. Abdul Raheem
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Correspondence to Amjad Ali Pasha.

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Pasha, A.A., Abdul Raheem, M., Islam, N. et al. CFD Study of Variable Property Effects on Laminar Micro-convective Heat Transfer. Arab J Sci Eng 44, 5961–5972 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-019-03797-8

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