Convective Heat Transfer of Unchoked and Choked Gas Flow in Micro-Tubes

Abstract

Heat transfer characteristics of unchoked and choked gas flows in micro-tubes with constant wall temperature were numerically investigated both laminar and turbulent flow cases. The numerical methodology is based on the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method. The Lam-Bremhorst Low-Reynolds number turbulence model was used for turbulent flow. The compressible momentum and energy equations with the assumption of the ideal gas were solved. The computational domain should be extended to the downstream region of the hemisphere from micro-tube outlet. The back pressure was given to the outside of the downstream region. The stagnation temperature is fixed at 300K and the computations were done for the wall temperature which ranges from 305K to 350K. The tube diameter ranges from 50 to 250 μm and tube aspect ratio is 200. The stagnation pressure is chosen in such a way that the flow at micro-tube exit is enough to be fully under-expanded. By increasing the stagnation pressure, the internal flow in the micro-tube is choked and the flow at the micro-tube outlet is under-expanded. Although the velocity remains constant, the mass flow rate (Reynolds number) increases. The results in a wide range of Reynolds number and Mach number were obtained. The bulk temperature based on the static temperature and the total temperature are compared with those of the incompressible flow. A correlation for the prediction of the heat transfer rate of the unchoked and choked gas flow in micro-tubes is proposed.