Effect of wall temperature modulation on the heat transfer characteristics of droplet-train flow inside a rectangular microchannel

Abstract

Abstract The numerical studies of water–oil two-phase slug flow inside a two-dimensional vertical microchannel subjected to modulated wall temperature boundary conditions have been discussed in the present paper. Many researchers have contributed their efforts in exploring the characteristics of Taylor flows inside microchannel under constant wall heat flux or isothermal wall conditions. However, there is no study available in the literature which discusses the impact of modulated thermal wall boundary conditions on the heat transfer behavior of slug flows inside microchannels. Hence, to bridge this gap, an effort has been made to understand the heat transfer characteristics of the flow under sinusoidal wall temperature conditions. Initially, a single phase flow and heat transfer study was performed in microchannels, and the results of the fully developed velocity profile and heat transfer rate were validated with benchmark analytical results. Then an optimal selection of the combination of sinusoidal thermal wall boundary conditions has been made for the two-phase slug flow study. Later, the effects of amplitude (0