Comparative study of flow characteristics in uniformly varying microchannel for di water and nanofluid

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of DI water and nanofluid on pressure drop and velocity characteristics of planar diverging and converging microchannels at different mass flow rates. Such channels can be used in microfluidic applications including microelectronic chip heat sinks. The length of the channel is kept 20 mm witha hydraulic diameter of 232 μm. Nanofluidconsists of Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles suspended in a 60:40 mixture of ethylene glycol and water. A CFD code is used to solve numerically the continuity and momentum equations to obtain the pressure drop and velocity distribution. Results show that pressure drop in case of nanofluid is about 7-8 times higher than DI water. In addition, the exit velocity of DI water is about 18-20% higher than the nanofluid under the same mass flow rate.