Abstract
This work displays a numerical and experimental investigation on the flow and heat transfer in tree-like branching microchannels and studies the effects of dimples on the heat transfer enhancement. The numerical approach is certified by a smooth branching microchannel experiment. The verification result shows that the SSG turbulence model can provide a reasonable prediction. Thus, further research on the convective heat transfer in dimpled branching microchannels is conducted with the SSG turbulence model. The results indicate that the dimples can significantly improve the averaged heat transfer performance of branching microchannels, and the heat transfer increment of the branch segment increases with the increase in the branching level. However, the flow dead zones in some dimples at bifurcations and bends suppress the turbulent flow and heat transfer. Furthermore, the Nu number ratio (Nu(a)/Nu(s)) and thermal enhancement factor (η) both monotonously decrease as the Re number increases, while the friction factor ratio (f(a)/f(s)) changes nonlinearly. The entropy generation rates of S ˙ t and S ˙ p in all dimpled cases are lower than those in the smooth case, and the dimpled case with the streamwise spacing to diameter ratio s/D = 3 obtains the lowest value of augmentation entropy generation (N(s)) under the high Re number conditions. Nu(a)/Nu(s), f(a)/f(s), and η decline with the increase in the streamwise spacing to diameter ratio (s/D) from 3 to 9; therefore, the dimpled case with s/D = 3 shows the best overall thermal performance.