• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.891-896
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• 2011

In this study, experiments were carried out to investigate the convective heat transfer characteristics of rectangular microchannels. The sample used in the experiments contained 20 rectangular microchannels in parallel. The channels had a hydraulic diameter of 700 ${\mu}m$. Distilled water was used as the working fluid. In the experiments, the Reynolds number ranged from 400 to 800, heat flux ranged from 35 to 85 kW/$m^2$, and the inlet fluid temperature was $20^{\circ}C$. As a result, the convective heat transfer coefficient increased upon increasing the Reynolds number and ranged from 4.6 to 6.4 kW/$m^2/^{\circ}C$ in the thermally fully developed region. Moreover, the higher the Reynolds number, the longer the thermal entry length in the rectangular microchannels. However, it was observed that a variable heat flux did not affect the thermal entry length. In conclusion, a correlation was proposed to indicate the heat transfer characteristics in a thermally fully developed region.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.471-479
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• 2010

The adiabatic two-phase flow in single rectangular microchannels was studied for different aspect ratios. The working fluids were liquid water and nitrogen gas. The hydraulic diameters of the rectangular microchannels were 490, 322, and $143\;{\mu}m$, and the widths of the microchannels were around $500\;{\mu}m$. The two-phase flow pattern was visualized using a high-speed camera and a long-distance microscope. This study was focused on bubble flow regimes. From the visualized images, the bubble velocity, bubble length, number of bubbles, and void fraction were evaluated. Further, the pressure drop in a single bubble was evaluated by using a unit cell model. The bubble velocity is proportional to the superficial velocity. Further, the relationship between the void fraction and the volumetric quality is linear. The pressure drop in a single elongated bubble is strongly related to the aspect ratio. Finally, the new correlation about the pressure drop of a single elongated bubble in the rectangular microchannel was proposed.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.1999-2004
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• 2004

Experiments were conducted to investigate the flow characteristics of water through rectangular PDMS microchannels with a hydraulic diameter ranging from 66.67 to 200 ${\mu}m$. In the experiments, the flow rate and pressure drop across the microchannels were measured at steady states. The experimental results were compared with the predictions from the conventional laminar flow theory. A significant difference between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions was found. Experimental results indicate that the pressure gradient and flow friction in microchannels are higher than those from the conventional laminar flow theory. This may be attributed to the fact that there exists effect of surface roughness of the microchannels. In this study, a surface roughness model is implemented to interpret the experimental data. A good agreement between the experimental data and the numerical predictions with a surface roughness model were found.

• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.51-60
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• 2005

This paper reviews the studies on the pressure drop and the heat transfer in microchannels. Although a lot of studies about the single-phase flow have been done until now, conflicting results are occasionally reported about flow transition from laminar flow to turbulent flow, friction factor, and Nusselt number. Some studies reported the early flow transition due to relatively greater wall effect like surface roughness, but the other studies showed that the flow transition occurred at the Reynolds number of about 2300 and the early flow transition might be due to less accurate measurement of the channel geometry. Also, there have been arguments whether the conventional relation based upon continuum theory can be applied to the fluid flow and the heat transfer in microchannels without modification or not. The studies about the two-phase flow in microchannels have been mostly about investigating the flow pattern and the pressure drop in rectangular channels using two-component, two-phase flow like air/water mixture. Some studies proposed correlations to predict two-phase flow pressure drop in microchannels. They were mostly based on Lockhart-Martinelli model with modification on C-coefficient, which was dependent on channel geometry, Reynolds number, surface tension, and so on. Others investigated the characteristics of flow boiling heat transfer in microchannels with respect to test parameters such as mass flux, heat flux, system pressure, and so on. The existing studies have not been fully satisfactory in providing consistent results about the pressure drop and the heat transfer in microchannels. Therefore, more in-depth studies should be done for understanding the fundamentals of the transport phenomena in the microchannels and giving the basic guidelines to design the micro devices.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2803-2810
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• 2007

Three dimensional numerical studies were carried out to investigate the effect of aspect ratio on gas slip flow in rectangular microchannels. We focused on aspect ratio effect on slip velocity, pressure distribution and mass flow rate. As aspect ratio decreases the wall slip velocity also decreases. As a result nonlinearity of pressure distribution increases. The slip velocities on sides and top/bottom walls are different and this difference decreases with increasing aspect ratio. These two velocities are equal when aspect ratio is 1. The ratios of slip mass flow rate over noslip mass flow rate increases with increasing aspect ratios.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.204-207
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• 2008

Stochastic molecular dynamics simulation is a variation of standard molecular dynamics simulation that basically omits water molecules. The omission of water molecules, occupying a majority of space, enables flow simulation at microscale. This study reports our stochastic molecular dynamics simulation of particles diffusing in rectangular microchannels. We interestingly found that diffusion patterns in channels with a very small aspect ratio differ by dimensions. We will also discuss the future direction of our research toward a more realistic simulation of micromixing.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.204-207
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• 2008

Stochastic molecular dynamics simulation is a variation of standard molecular dynamics simulation that basically omits water molecules. The omission of water molecules, occupying a majority of space, enables flow simulation at microscale. This study reports our stochastic molecular dynamics simulation of particles diffusing in rectangular microchannels. We interestingly found that diffusion patterns in channels with a very small aspect ratio differ by dimensions. We will also discuss the future direction of our research toward a more realistic simulation of micromixing.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.710-716
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• 2006

Micro-PIV system with a high speed CCD camera is used to measure the flow field near the advancing meniscus of a water slug in microchannels. Image shifting technique combined with meniscus detecting technique is proposed to measure the relative velocity of the liquid near the meniscus in a moving reference frame. The proposed method is applied to an advancing front of a slug in microchannels with rectangular cross section. In the case of hydrophilic channel, strong flow from the center to the side wall along the meniscus occurs, while in the case of the hydrophobic channel, the fluid flows in the opposite direction. Further, the velocity near the side wall is higher than the center region velocity, exhibiting the characteristics of a strong shear-driven flow. This phenomenon is explained to be due to the existence of small gaps between the slug and the channel wall at each capillary corner so that the gas flows through the gaps inducing high shear on the slug surface. Simulation of the shape of a static droplet inside a cubic cell obtained by using the Surface Evolver program is supportive of the existence of the gap at the rectangular capillary corners. The flow fields in the circular capillary, in which no such gap exists, are also measured. The results show that a similar flow pattern to that of the hydrophilic rectangular capillary (i.e., center-to-wall flow) is always exhibited regardless of the wettability of the channel wall, which is also indicative of the validity of the above-mentioned assertion.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.9-18
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• 2010

There are two kinds of models in two-phase pressured drop; homogeneous flow model and separated flow model. Many previous researchers have developed correlations for two-phase pressure drop in a microchannel. Most correlations were modified Lockhart and Martinelli's correlation, which was based on the separated flow model. In this study, experiments for adiabatic liquid water and nitrogen gas flow in rectangular microchannels were conducted to investigate two-phase pressure drop in the rectangular microchannels. Two-phase frictional pressure drop in the rectangular microchannels is highly related with flow regime. Homogeneous model with six two-phase viscosity models: $Owen^{(21)}$'s, $MacAdams^{(22)}$'s, Cicchitti et ${al.}^{(23)}$'s, Dukler et ${al.}^{(24)}$'s, Beattie and ${Whalley}^{(25)}$'s, Lin et ${al.}^{(26)}$'s models and six separated flow models: Lockhart and $Martinelli^{(27)}$'s, ${Chisholm}^{(31)}$'s, Zhang et ${al.,}^{(15)}$'s, Lee and ${Lee}^{(5)}$'s, Moriyama and ${Inue}^{(4)}$'s, Qu and $Mudawar^{(8)}$'s models were assessed with our experimental data. The best two-phase viscosity model is Beattie and Whalley's model. The best separated flow model is Qu and Mudawar's correlation. Flow regime dependency in both homogeneous and separated flow models was observed. Therefore, new flow pattern based correlations for both homogeneous and separated flow models were individually proposed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.939-946
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• 2009

Wettability is a critical parameter in micro-scale two-phase system. Several previous results indicate that wettability has influential affect on two-phase flow pattern in a microchannel. However, previous studies conducted using circular microtube, which was made by conventional fabrication techniques. Although most applications for micro thermal hydraulic system has used a rectangular microchannel, data for the rectangular microchannel is totally lack. In this study, a hydrophilic rectangular microchannel was fabricated using a photosensitive glass. And a hydrophobic rectangular microchannel was prepared using silanization of glass surfaces with OTS (octa-dethyl-trichloro-siliane). Experiments of two-phase flow in the hydrophilic and the hydrophobic rectangular microchannels were conducted using water and nitrogen gas. Visualization of twophase flow pattern was carried out using a high-speed camera and a long distance microscope. Visualization results show that the wettability was important for two-phase flow pattern in rectangular microchannel. In addition, two-phase frictional pressure drop was highly related with flow patterns. Finally, Two-phase frictional pressure drop was analyzed with flow patterns.