Analysis of Triangular Microchannel Under Forced Convection Heat Transfer Condition for Laminar Flow Condition

Micro-convection is a strategic area in transport phenomena, since it is the basis for a wide range of miniaturized high-performance heat transfer applications. Surface area is one of the important parameter for high flux heat transfer in microchannel performance. This experimental study deals with heat transfer using triangular microchannel having hydraulic diameters of 321μm and 289μm. Experimentation is carried out for triangular microchannel set for different heat input and flow rate condition. Triangular microchannel are manufactured with EDM technology. Testing of microchannel under laminar flow is considered with different tip angle, spacing, and length of microchannels. The different microchannels made up of copper material with 29 microchannel each having three different sets of length of 50 mm, 70 mm and 90 mm respectively. Tip angles for triangular microchannel is varied 50 ° and 60 ° with width of 30 mm each respectively are analyzed numerically. Spacing between triangular microchannels is also varied and 300μm and 400μm are considered for the analysis. Water flow rate is considered laminar flow. The flow rate of water is varied from 0.0167 kg/sec to 0.167 kg/sce to carry away heat. It is observed that as hydraulic diameters increase the heat transfer coefficient decreases. As the heat input to microchannel increases from 10 Watt to 100 Watt the temperature drop across varies from 2° C to 22°C as water flow rate increases. The numerical analysis is done using computer C programming. Experimental result differ from theoretical for temperature drop with variation of 2°C to 5°C. It is also observed that in all triangular microchannels its geometry i.e. tip angle and hydraulic diameter are dominant parameters which influences on rate of heat transfer. With increasing channel depth, increases flow passage area therefore enhances heat transfer sufficiently. From experimentation a Nu number correlation is proposed with considering tip angle, length, spacing of microchannel and other related parameters.