Local Nusselt number enhancements in liquid–liquid Taylor flows

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Abstract Thermal management has emerged as a critical requirement to ensure the performance and reliability of electronic devices and systems. System level heat fluxes are approaching the limits of conventional forced air cooling, and there is a need to develop alternative cooling techniques for devices such as processors, power amplifiers and laser arrays. This paper examines the potential heat transfer enhancements of a two phase liquid–liquid Taylor flow regime. The primary focus of the work was to examine the influence of slug length and carrier phase variations on the local Nusselt numbers. An experimental facility was designed and commissioned to subject the flow to a constant heat flux boundary condition, a boundary condition commonly encountered in thermal management applications. Local temperature measurements were acquired using a high resolution infrared thermography system. Experiments were carried out over slug length, Capillary and Prandtl numbers that spanned several orders of magnitude in a minichannel geometry. Reductions in carrier slug length and increases in dispersed slug length were found to augment the heat transfer rates, with the greatest enhancements observed in flows with carrier slug lengths approaching the channel diameter. The thickness of the liquid film separating the dispersed slugs from the heated capillary walls was found to play a significant role in the removal of heat, with increases in film thickness resulting in a reduction in the heat transfer rates. Based on the characteristics identified, a novel correlation is proposed to model the flow in the thermally developing and fully-developed regions.