Transport Phenomenon of Simultaneously Developing Flow and Heat Transfer in Twisted Sinusoidal Wavy Microchannel under Pulsating Inlet Flow Condition

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Pilani Campus,Vidya Vihar, Rajasthan 333 031, India
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700 32. India
³ Center of Flow Simulation (CFS), Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Dusseldorf University of Applied Sciences, D-40476 Dusseldorf, Germany
⁴ Department of Design & Engineering, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK, ST4 2DE

^* Corresponding author: suvanjanr@gmail.com

Abstract

The transport phenomena in microchannel are significant in designing MEMS devices. The current study investigates numerically the simultaneously developing unsteady laminar flow and heat transfer inside a twisted sinusoidal wavy microchannel. At the inlet sinusoidal varying velocity component is applied. Varying pulsating amplitude and frequency represented by the Strouhal number was studied for Reynolds numbers ranging from 1 to 100. The governing equations are solved with a finite volume based numerical method. In comparison with steady flow, it was found that imposed sinusoidal velocity at the inlet can provide improved heat transfer performance at different amplitudes and frequencies while keeping the pressure drop within acceptable limits.