Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Gas Flows in Microchannels and Micro Heat Exchanger

Due to increased interest in miniaturization, great attention has been given in the recent decade to the micro heat exchanging systems. Literature survey suggests that there is still a limited understanding of gas flows in micro heat exchanging systems. The aim of the current thesis is to further the understanding of fluid flow and heat transfer phenomenon inside such geometries when a compressible working fluid is utilized. A combined experimental and numerical approach has been utilized in order to overcome the lack of employable sensors for micro dimensional channels. After conducting a detailed comparison between various data reduction methodologies employed in the literature, the best suited methodology for gas microflow experimentalists is proposed. A transitional turbulence model is extensively validated against the experimental results of the microtubes and microchannels under adiabatic wall conditions. Heat transfer analysis of single microtubes showed that when the compressible working fluid is used, Nusselt number results are in partial disagreement with the conventional theory at highly turbulent flow regime for microtubes having a hydraulic diameter less than 250 microns. Experimental and numerical analysis on a prototype double layer microchannel heat exchanger showed that compressibility is detrimental to the thermal performance. It has been found that compressibility effects for micro heat exchangers are significant when the average Mach number at the outlet of the microchannel is greater than 0.1 compared to the adiabatic limit of 0.3. Lastly, to avoid a staggering amount of the computational power needed to simulate the micro heat exchanging systems with hundreds of microchannels, a reduced order model based on the porous medium has been developed that considers the compressibility of the gas inside microchannels. The validation of the proposed model against experimental results of average thermal effectiveness and the pressure loss showed an excellent match between the two.