Flow and Heat Transfer in Micro Systems: Is Everything Different or Just Smaller?

Abstract

In almost all studies on flow and heat transfer published so far deviations from what is known in macro systems occur. Often special micro effects are proposed to explain these unexpected results. From our point of view, however, this approach is misleading. Instead, all systems - micro and macro - as long as they can be described within a continuum theory should be treated uniquely and in a nondimensional form. Then it turns out that micro effects are scaling effects with respect to models developed for macro systems.