FRICTIONAL FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF WATER FLOWING THROUGH RECTANGULAR MICROCHANNELS

Experiments were conducted to investigate the flow characteristics of water flowing through rectangular microchannels having hydraulic diameters of 0.133-0.367 mm and H/W ratios of 0.333-1. Experimental results indicated that the laminar flow transition occurred al Reynolds numbers of 200-700. This critical Re for the laminar transition was strongly affected by the hydraulic diameter, decreasing with corresponding decreases in the microchannel. In addition, the size of the transition range was diminished and fully developed turbulent flow also occurred at much lower Re. The friction behavior of both the laminar and turbulent flow was found to depart from the classical thermofluid correlations. The friction factor, f, was found to be proportional to Re--1.98 rather than Re for the laminar condition, and proportional to Re--1.72 for turbulent flow. The geometric parameters, hydraulic diameter, and H/W were found to be the most important parameters and had a critical effect on the flow. Generally, increasing the ratio H/W increases the friction factor. The reduction of the microchannel hydraulic radius decreases the friction factor significantly for a given H/W. There exists a special range of ratio H/W (approximately 0.5 mm) at which the experimental data are lower than the predictions obtained from classical correlations. Continued reduction of channel size increases the difference between f(l,exp) and f(l,theo) at Re-cri, and the quantity of f(l,exp) Becomes smaller within the region adjacent to H/W = 0.5, and larger when H/W is out of this region.