Forced Convective Heat Transfer Characteristics of Water Through a Minichannel at Higher Reynolds Number.

Convective heat transfer coefficient and friction factor of water in circular minichannels were measured. An integrated system consisting of a single minichannel on one side, and one heater and four thermocouple temperature sensors along the channel on the other side were fabricated. Distilled water was used in experiments to investigate the effect of the Reynolds number to the convective heat transfer and fluid flow in minichannels. The convective heat transfer coefficient of the water in turbulent flow regime was measured to be increased by increasing the Reynolds number. The Nusselt number measured increases with increasing the Reynolds number in turbulent flow regime. We have measured the pressure drop and convective heat transfer coefficient of water flowing through a uniformly heated circular minichannel in the turbulent flow regime. The experimental results show that the data for water friction factor show a good agreement with analytical predictions from the Darcy's equation for single-phase flow.