An experimental study of flow boiling through diverging microchannel has been carried out in this work, with the aim of understanding boiling in nonuniform cross-section microchannel. Diverging microchannel of 4° of divergence angle and 146 𝜇m hydraulic diameter (calculated at mid-length) has been employed for the present study with deionised water as working fluid. Effect of mass flux (118–1182 kg/m²-s) and heat flux (1.6–19.2 W/cm²) on single and two-phase pressure drop and average heat transfer coefficient has been studied. Concurrently, flow visualization is carried out to document the various flow regimes and to correlate the pressure drop and average heat transfer coefficient to the underlying flow regime. Four flow regimes have been identified from the measurements: bubbly, slug, slug–annular and periodic dry-out/rewetting. Variation of pressure drop with heat flux shows one maxima which corresponds to transition from bubbly to slug flow. It is shown that significantly large heat transfer coefficient (up to 107 kW/m²-K) can be attained for such systems, for small pressure drop penalty and with good flow stability.

The problem of fluid flow and heat transfer was studied for flow inside twisted duct of square cross-section. Three-dimensional numerical solutions were obtained for steady fully developed laminar flow and for uniform wall heat flux boundary conditions using commercially available software. Reynolds number range considered was 100-3000. Twist ratio used are 2.5, 5, 10 and 20. Fluids considered are in Prandtl number range of 0.7-20. Product of friction factor and Reynolds number is found to be a function of Reynolds number and maximum values are observed for a twist ratio of 2.5 and Reynolds number of 3000. Maximum Nusselt number is observed for the same values along with Prandtl number of 20. Correlations for friction factor and Nusselt number are developed involving swirl parameter. Local distribution of friction factor ratio and Nusselt number across a cross-section is presented. Based on constant pumping power criteria, enhancement factor is defined to compare twisted ducts with straight ducts. Selection of twisted square duct is presented in terms of enhancement factor. It is found that twisted duct performs well in the laminar region for range of parameters studied. Heat transfer enhancement for Reynolds number of 3000 and Prandtl number of 0.7 for twist ratio of 2.5, 5, 10, and 20 is 20%, 17.8%, 16.1% and 13.7%, respectively. The results are significant because it will contribute to development of energy efficient compact size heat exchangers.

In this work, we present detailed particle image velocimetry (PIV) based investigation of wake structure of a pitching airfoil. PIV measurements have been carried out for NACA0015 airfoil at Re = 2900 with reduced frequency range of 1.82–10.92 and pitching angle of 5°. Two different wake structures (reverse Kármán shedding and deflected vortex shedding) are observed over this parameter range. The vorticity decreases substantially over a distance of two chord-lengths. The velocity profile indicates a jet-like flow downstream of the airfoil. It is shown that the jet-like flow downstream of the airfoil is however not a sufficient condition for the generation of thrust. The vortex strength is found to be invariant of the pitching frequency. Certain differences from the reported results are noted, which may be because of difference in the airfoil shape. These results can help improve understanding of the flow behavior as the low Reynolds number range is not well studied.

Fish-like undulating body was proposed as an efficient propulsion system, and various mechanisms of thrust generation in this type of propulsion are found in the literature—separately for undulating and pitching fishes/foil. The present work proposes a unified study for undulating and pitching foil, by varying wavelength l (from 0.8 to 8.0) of a wave traveling backwards over the NACA0012 hydrofoil in a free-stream flow; the larger wavelength is shown to lead to the transition from the undulating motion to pitching motion. The effect ofwavelength of undulation is studied numerically at a Reynolds number Re=4000, maximum amplitude of undulation A_max 0:1 and non-dimensional frequency of undulation St=0:4, using level-set immersedboundary-method based in-house 2D code. The Navier–Stokes equation governing the fluid flow is solved using a fully implicit finite-volume method, while level-set equation governing the movement of the hydrofoil is solved using an explicit finite-difference method. It is presented here that the thrust generation mechanism for the low wavelength case undulating (l=0.8) foil is different from the mechanism for the high wavelength pitching foil. With increasing wavelength, mean thrust coefficient of the undulating foil increases and asymptotes to value for the pure pitching foil. Furthermore, the ratio of maximum thrust coefficient to maximum lateral force coefficient is found to be larger for the smaller wavelength undulating foil as compared with the larger wavelength pitching foil.

Although the Cassie–Baxter and Wenzel equations predict contact angles for relative dimensions of micro-pillars on textured surfaces, the absolute pillar dimensions are determined by trial and error. Alternatively, geometries of natural super-hydrophobic surfaces are often imitated to design textured surfaces. Knowing the limitations of both the approaches, this work presents a constraint minimization model on the basis of Cassie–Baxter equation to determine the absolute dimensions of square micro-pillars on a textured surface so as tomaximize the contact angle. The constraints are derived based on the limiting physical conditions at which spontaneous breakdown of super-hydrophobicity takes place. The single-droplet numerical simulations on textured surface gave the duration for which super-hydrophobicity is sustained. The model demonstrated that the round edged pillars, arising out of fabrication imperfections, reduce the height of the pillars without significantly compromising on the contact angle. The measurement of contact angle on the fabricated textured surfaces wasfound to be in agreement with the model predictions when the fabricated pillars had fairly uniform dimensions.The proposed approach is sufficiently general that its application can be extended to design other textured surface

The current study investigates the effect of pulsation frequency on the near field characteristics of a submerged water jet using the technique of dye visualization. Flow visualization was performed in water over the range: Reynolds number 540–1540, Strouhal number 0.16–1.75, and at constant amplitude of pulsation of18%. The results show that the mixing and entrainment process at lower Reynolds number occurs due to diffusion process owing to relatively stable shear layer for the case of a steady jet, whereas the external pulsation promotes an early instability in the shear layer where irregular structures promotes mixing between the jet and surrounding fluids. Images of streaklines show that initial mixing and entrainment processes in the potential core of the jet is due to the development of large vortical structures. While beyond the potential core, mixing andentrainment are governed by the small-scale structures. Further results show that the initiation and growth of vortices in the shear layer depends on the pulse frequency. For a given Reynolds number and amplitude, the number of vortical structures and their size changes with frequency. With an increase in the pulsation frequency, there is an increase in the spreading of the jet along with stretching of the vortical structures. An optimum pulsating frequency at which the effect of pulsation on the flow is maximum occurs at St = 0.44, independent of Reynolds number. These results should eventually lead to a better understanding of the physical phenomena responsible for enhanced mixing and entrainment processes in the presence of pulsating jets.

This paper presents an experimental study of rarefied gas flow in a trapezoidal microchannel with a constant depth of 103 μm, top width of 1143 μm, bottom width of 998 μm and length of 2 cm. The aim of the study is to verify the upper limit of the validity of the second-order slip boundary condition to model rarefied gas flows. The slip coefficients and the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient (TMAC) are determined for three different gases, viz. argon, nitrogen and oxygen, and it is observed that they compare well to theliterature values. The range of mean Knudsen number (Kn_m) investigated is 0.007–1.2. The non-dimensional mass flow rate exhibits the well-known Knudsen minimum in the transition regime (Kn_m ~ 1). It is seen that the Navier–Stokes equation with a second-order boundary condition fits the data satisfactorily with a high value of correlation coefficient (r² >99.95%) in the entire range of Kn_m investigated. This work contributes by extending the range of Knudsen number studied in the context of validity of the second-order slip boundary condition.

Since the realization of microchannel devices more than three and half decades ago with water as the cooling fluid providing heat transfer enhancement, significant progress has been made to improve the cooling performance. Thermal management for electronic devices with their ever-widening user profile remains the major driving force for performance improvement in terms of miniaturisation, long-term reliability, and ease of maintenance. The ever-increasing requirement of meeting higher heat flux density in more compact and powerful electronic systems calls for further innovative solutions. Some recent studies indicate the promise offered by processes with phase change and the use of active devices. But their adoption for electronic cooling still weighs unfavourably against long-term fluid stability and simplicity of device profile with moderate to high heat transfer capability. Applications and reviews of these promising research trends have been briefly visited in this work. The main focus of this review is the flow and heat transfer regime related to electronic cooling in evolving channel forms, whose fabrication are being enabled by the significant advancement in micro-technologies. Use of disruptive wall structures like ribs, cavities, dimples, protrusions, secondary channels and other interrupts along with smooth-walled channels with curved flow passages remain the two chief geometrical innovationsenvisaged for these applications. These innovations target higher thermal enhancement factor since this implies more heat transfer capability for the same pumping power in comparison with the corresponding straight-axis,smooth-wall channel configuration. The sophistication necessary to deal with the experimental uncertainties associated with the micron-level characteristic length scale of any microchannel device delayed the availability of results that exhibited acceptable matching with numerical investigations. It is indeed encouraging that the experimental results pertaining to simple smooth channels to grooved, ribbed and curved microchannels without unreasonable increase in pumping power have shown good agreement with conventional numerical analyses based on laminar-flow conjugate heat-transfer model with no-slip boundary condition. The flow mechanism with the different disruptive structures like dimple, cavity and rib, fin and interruption, vortex generator, converging diverging side walls or curved axis are reviewed to augment the heat transfer. While the disruptions cause heattransfer enhancement by interrupting the boundary layer growth and promoting mixing by the shed vortices or secondary channel flow, the flow curvature brings in enhancement by the formation of secondary rolls culminating into chaotic advection at higher Reynolds number. Besides these revelations, the numerical studies helped in identifying the parameter ranges, promoting a particular enhancement mechanism. Also, the use of modern tools like Poincare section and the analysis of flow bifurcation leading to chaotic advection is discussed. Amongthe different disruptive structures, sidewall cavity with rib on the bottom wall within the cavity plays a significant role in augmenting the thermal performance. Among the different converging-diverging side walls or curved axis, the sinusoidal channel provides the highest mixing by the introduction of secondary vortices or deanvortices to augment the heat transfer with less pressure drop. The optimum geometry in terms of high heat transfer with low pressure plays a major role in the design of heat sink. Directions of some future research are provided at the end.

The present study evaluates the dynamic response of connecting tubes for transient pressure measurement. A systematic study is conducted to quantify the amplitude and phase distortion of connecting tubes of diameter 1, 2 and 3 mm with different lengths (10–50 cm). The experimental measurements andtheoretical predictions have been carried out with both air and water as the working medium to cover a wide range of frequencies. The study highlights the underdamped nature of all the systems studied. The natural frequency of the system increases with an increase in the tube diameter and a decrease in tube length. The difference in natural frequency obtained from the experimental results and theoretical prediction is less for the smaller tube diameter (d = 1 mm) and more pronounced for the larger tube diameter. Larger tube diameters arerecommended to avoid amplitude and phase distortion errors, especially in the low-frequency range. However, resonance effects are more pronounced for larger tube diameters. The phase response of larger tube diametersremains close to zero over a large range of frequency (0–0.8 times the natural frequency); hence, this range is more suitable for applications where phase information is more important than amplitude. This study is useful for compensating the amplitude and phase distortion error encountered in transient pressure measurements