Measurement of Heat Transfer Coefficient in Dimpled Channel: Effect of Dimple Arrangement and Channel Height

In this paper, heat transfer coefficients were measured in a channel with one side dimpled surface. The sphere type dimples were fabricated and the diameter and depth of dimple was 16mm and 4mm, respectively. Two channel heights of about 0.6 and 1.2 time of the dimple diameter, two dimple configuration were tested. The Reynolds numbers based on the channel hydraulic diameter was varied from 30000 to 50000. The improved hue detection based transient liquid crystal technique was used in the heat transfer measurement. Heat transfer measurement results showed that high heat transfer was induced downstream of dimples due to flow reattachment. Due to the flow recirculation on the upstream side in the dimple, the heat transfer coefficient was very low. As the Reynolds increased, the overall heat transfer coefficients also increased. With same dimple arrangement, the heat transfer coefficients and the thermal performance factor were higher for the lower channel height. As the distance between dimples became smaller, the overall heat transfer coefficient and the thermal performance factor were increased.