Effects of elastic pillars on fluid-flow and heat transfer enhancement in a micro-channel

Abstract

In this paper, periodic vortices are generated by a fluid passing a cylindrical obstacle near the microchannel inlet. Two elastic pillars are arranged on the walls, and the effect of the pillar spacing on heat transfer performance is studied using the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Euler method. With the spacing of 10d, the small pillar amplitude of 2 ?m is not conducive to the generation of vortices. The flexible vortex generator has higher heat transfer efficiency and lower pressure loss than the rigid vortex generator. The two pillars with no spacing generate isolated vortices, and the mixing of these vortices is insufficient downstream the pillars. It is found that with the pillar spacing of 5d, the overall performance factor is significantly higher than that with the pillar spacing of 0 and 10d in the Reynolds number range of 800 to 1,100. The average Nusselt number with the spacing of 5d increases by 19.2% compared to that with the spacing of 0 at the Reynolds number of 1,000. When the Reynolds number is 1,100, the overall performance factor is 43% higher than that with a single rigid pillar. The vortices are periodically generated by the two pillars with the 5d spacing, and the disturbance to the boundary layer enhances the heat transfer downstream the region in the microchannel.