Internal and External Influences on Hydro-Thermal Behavior of Micro-channel Flow

Abstract

Microchannel flow is an effective solution for many engineering problems. Application of microchannels is found in various fields such as thermal management of electronics, micro-combustors, biomedical industries, MEMS. In microchannel flow, some internal and external influences such as surface roughness, electric and magnetic fields are very significant and commonly neglected in macro-scale flow. Early research works on microchannels stated that the conventional theories of macro-scale flow were not applicable for microscale flows. Finally, researchers are concluded that the deviation in conventional theories in the case of micro-scale flow is because of neglecting the internal forces, surface roughness, surface wettability, etc., which play a prime role in micro-scale flows. In this chapter, the behavior of microchannel flow under the internal and external influences is discussed. The heat transfer and hydrodynamic characteristics of microchannel flow under the external magnetic field and electric fields are presented. The effect of surface morphology, roughness, electro-osmotic effect, electrophoresis, internal heat generation, and analysis methods is discussed.