FULLY-DEVELOPED THERMAL TRANSPORT IN MICROCHANNELS WITH STREAMWISE GROOVED SUPERHYDROPHOBIC WALLS AT CONSTANT HEAT FLUX

This paper presents an analytical investigation of constant property, steady, fully-developed, laminar thermal transport in a parallel-plate channel comprised of metal superhydrophobic walls. The superhydrophobic walls considered here exhibit micro-ribs and cavities aligned in the streamwise direction. The cavities are assumed to be nonwetting and contain air, such that the Cassie-Baxter state is the interfacial state considered. The scenario considered is that of constant heat flux through the rib surfaces with negligible thermal transport through the air cavity interface. Closed form solutions for the local Nusselt number and local wall temperature are presented and are in the form of infinite series expansions. The analysis show the relative size of the cavity regions compared to the total rib and cavity width (cavity fraction) exercises significant influence on the aggregate thermal transport behavior. Further, the relative size of the rib and cavity module width compared to the channel hydraulic diameter (relative module width) also influences the Nusselt number. The spatially varying Nusselt number and wall temperature are presented as a function of the cavity fraction and the relative module width over the ranges 0 - 0.99 and 0.01 - 1.0, respectively. From these results the rib/cavity module averaged Nusselt number was determined as a function of the governing parameters. The results reveal that increases in either the cavity fraction or relative module width lead to decreases in the average Nusselt number and results are presented over a wide range of conditions from which the average Nusselt number can be determined for heat transfer analysis. Further, analogous to the hydrodynamic slip length, a temperature jump length describing the apparent temperature jump at the wall is determined in terms of the cavity fraction. Remarkably, it is nearly identical to the hydrodynamic slip length for the scenario considered here and allows straightforward determination of the average Nusselt number for any cavity fraction and relative rib/cavity module width.