Fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics in minichannels - CFD calculations in simcenter STAR-CCM

The paper presents an experimental and numerical analysis on heat transfer during distilled water flow in an asymmetrically heated minichannel. The experimental study was conducted in a horizontally oriented test section, where the temperature of the external surface of the minichannel heated wall was measured by an infrared camera. The experimental data were used to validate the results of numerical simulations performed in Simcenter STAR-CCM + software. The governing equations for mass, momentum, and energy conservation were considered, along with the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence model. Numerical results were presented as distributions of temperature, velocity, and heat transfer coefficients along the channel length. A decrease in the heat transfer coefficient was identified with increasing distance from the channel inlet. The innovative aspect of this study lies in combining experimental data with advanced CFD simulations, enabling comprehensive validation of the models, rarely achieved in the literature on minichannels. The results demonstrate that the numerical models accurately describe the experiment, with the mean temperature difference between the simulation results and the thermographic measurements being 2.12 K. These findings can contribute to the optimisation of heat transfer processes in cooling devices for electronics applications.