Abhijit Borah, Sumit Kumar Mehta and Sukumar Pati
The purpose of this paper is to analyze numerically forced convective conjugate heat transfer characteristics for laminar flow through a wavy minichannel.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze numerically forced convective conjugate heat transfer characteristics for laminar flow through a wavy minichannel.
Design/methodology/approach
The mass and momentum conservation equations for the flow of water in the fluidic domain and the coupled energy conservation equations in both the fluid and solid domain are solved numerically using the finite element method. The exteriors of both the walls are subjected to a uniform heat flux.
Findings
The results reveal that the theoretical model without consideration of the effect of wall thickness always predicts a lower value of average Nusselt number (
Practical implications
The present study finds relevance in several applications, such as solar collectors and heat exchangers used in chemical industries and heating-ventilation and air-conditioning, etc.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the analysis of combined influences of the thickness and the material of the wall of the channel together with the geometrical parameters of the channel, namely, amplitude and wavelength on the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics for flow through wavy minichannel in the laminar regime is reported first time in the literature.