Analysis of flow through rectangular mini channel with surface irregularities

This paper presents numerical investigations on forced convection in  mini-channels with realistic cross-sectional shapes. The numerical study is based on Finite Difference solution of the governing equations, incorporating  actual irregular cross-sectional profile of fabricated channel in the flow domain, using image processing. Numerical studies have been performed using  ANSYS Fluent 13.0 to obtain the temperature distributions and calculate heat  transfer parameters in water flow through mini-channel. The Nusselt number  values were compared and contrasted with apparent regular geometry as well as  the actual irregular geometry. The findings suggest that some of the  observed deviations in the performance of small channels, compared to  theoretical results, are possibly due to the assumption of regular domain  shapes while performing theoretical analysis.