Enhancement of turbulent airflow and heat transfer through a rectangular microchannel with different types of baffles

Abstract

The objective of this work is to discuss the turbulent air hydro-thermal phenomena over a rectangular microchannel with different types of baffle (rectangular, triangular, and trapezoidal) mounted on both the walls of the microchannel. The finite volume method with the second order upwind scheme has been utilized to discretize the governing equations and to study the turbulent airflow characteristics; the SST k-turbulence model has been adopted. For nine different cases, the different characteristics of fluid flow phenomena and thermal behaviour with the variations in the Reynolds number ranging from [5,000-25,000] and for three different values of inter baffle spacing have been studied in this manuscript. Due to the presence of baffle, it is revealed that the vortex arises on the upper wall and the thermal phenomena enhances with the decrease in inter baffle spacing.