• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.51-63
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• 2008

A study of literatures on flow boiling heat transfer and two-phase flows inside microchannels is summarized. The potential applications, fabrication method and efforts to determine certain dimensional threshold for microchannels classifications are discussed. For the last two decades, numerous two-phase flow and heat transfer models for microchannels have been developed; many of them were derived from empirical models originally applied for conventional channels. Those models are discussed here along with a brief review on recent development of theoretical and phenomenological-based models for microchannels. This study is devoted to provide a review of important issues on flow boiling heat transfer and two-phase flows inside microchannels, including two-phase flow patterns, boiling heat transfer mechanism and correlations developments, pressure drop and prediction methods, and critical heat flux.

• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.51-60
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• 2005

This paper reviews the studies on the pressure drop and the heat transfer in microchannels. Although a lot of studies about the single-phase flow have been done until now, conflicting results are occasionally reported about flow transition from laminar flow to turbulent flow, friction factor, and Nusselt number. Some studies reported the early flow transition due to relatively greater wall effect like surface roughness, but the other studies showed that the flow transition occurred at the Reynolds number of about 2300 and the early flow transition might be due to less accurate measurement of the channel geometry. Also, there have been arguments whether the conventional relation based upon continuum theory can be applied to the fluid flow and the heat transfer in microchannels without modification or not. The studies about the two-phase flow in microchannels have been mostly about investigating the flow pattern and the pressure drop in rectangular channels using two-component, two-phase flow like air/water mixture. Some studies proposed correlations to predict two-phase flow pressure drop in microchannels. They were mostly based on Lockhart-Martinelli model with modification on C-coefficient, which was dependent on channel geometry, Reynolds number, surface tension, and so on. Others investigated the characteristics of flow boiling heat transfer in microchannels with respect to test parameters such as mass flux, heat flux, system pressure, and so on. The existing studies have not been fully satisfactory in providing consistent results about the pressure drop and the heat transfer in microchannels. Therefore, more in-depth studies should be done for understanding the fundamentals of the transport phenomena in the microchannels and giving the basic guidelines to design the micro devices.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.03b
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• pp.472-473
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• 2008

Flow boiling in parallel microchannels has received attention as an effective heat sink mechanism for power-densities encountered in microelectronic equipment. the bubble dynamics coupled with boiling heat transfer in microchannels is still not well understood due to the technological difficulties in obtaining detailed measurements of microscale two-phase flows. In this study, complete numerical simulation is performed to further clarify the dynamics of flow boiling in microchannels. The level set method for tracking the liquid-vapor interface is modified to include the effects of phase change and contact angle. The method is further extended to treat the no-slip and contact angle conditions on the immersed solid. Also, the reverse flow observed during flow boiling in parallel microchannels has been investigated. Based on the numerical results, the effects of channel shape and inlet area restriction on the bubble growth, reverse flow and heat transfer are quantified.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.1999-2004
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• 2004

Experiments were conducted to investigate the flow characteristics of water through rectangular PDMS microchannels with a hydraulic diameter ranging from 66.67 to 200 ${\mu}m$. In the experiments, the flow rate and pressure drop across the microchannels were measured at steady states. The experimental results were compared with the predictions from the conventional laminar flow theory. A significant difference between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions was found. Experimental results indicate that the pressure gradient and flow friction in microchannels are higher than those from the conventional laminar flow theory. This may be attributed to the fact that there exists effect of surface roughness of the microchannels. In this study, a surface roughness model is implemented to interpret the experimental data. A good agreement between the experimental data and the numerical predictions with a surface roughness model were found.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.87-94
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• 2011

Characteristics of two-phase pressure drop in microchannels were investigated experimentally. The microchannels consisted of 9 parallel trapezoidal channels with each channel having $205\;{\mu}m$ of bottom width, $800\;{\mu}m$ of depth, $3.6^{\circ}$ of sidewall angle, and 7 cm of length. Pressure drops in convective boiling of Refrigerant 113 were measured in the range of inlet pressure 105~195 kPa, mass velocity $150{\sim}920\;kg/m^2s$, and heat flux $10{\sim}100\;kW/m^2$. The total pressure drop generally increased with increasing mass velocity and/or heat flux. Two-phase frictional pressure drop across the microchannels increased rapidly with exit quality and showed bigger gradient at higher mass velocity. A critical review of correlations in the literature suggested that existing correlations were not able to match the experimental results obtained for two-phase pressure drop associated with convective boiling in microchannels. A new correlation suitable for predicting two-phase friction multiplier was developed based on the separated flow model and showed good agreement with the experimental data.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.9 s.186
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• pp.164-173
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• 2006

The cooling capacity of a micro-heat pipe is mainly governed by the magnitude of capillary pressure induced in the wick structure. For microchannel wicks, a higher capillary pressure is achievable for narrower and deeper channels. In this study, a metallic micro-heat pipe adopting high-aspect-ratio microchannel wicks is fabricated. Micromachining of high-aspect-ratio microchannels is done using the laser-induced wet etching technique in which a focused laser beam irradiates the workpiece placed in a liquid etchant along a desired channel pattern. Because of the direct writing characteristic of the laser-induced wet etching method, no mask is necessary and the fabrication procedure is relatively simple. Deep microchannels of an aspect ratio close to 10 can be readily fabricated with little heat damage of the workpiece. The laser-induced wet etching process for the fabrication of high-aspect-ratio microchannels in 0.5mm thick stainless steel foil is presented in detail. The shape and size variations of microchannels with respect to the process variables, such as laser power, scanning speed, number of scans, and etchant concentration are closely examined. Also, the fabrication of a flat micro-heat pipe based on the high-aspect-ratio microchannels is demonstrated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.3030-3042
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• 2024

Steel containment vessels for nuclear power plants can experience gas leakage due to minute defects such as cracks, corrosion, and aging, leading to gas leakage. A gas leakage model for microchannels is established to elucidate the mechanism underlying gas leakage within microchannels caused by these defects, specifically addressing the issue of unidirectional gas flow. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and the UK R6 method are employed to calculate the gas leakage rate within microchannels. Furthermore, the characteristics of gas flow within microchannels are explored, including the factors affecting the gas leakage rate. Validation of the calculation results is verified experimentally. The results indicate that the gas mass flow rate exhibits a linear decrease with decreasing internal pressure and a non-linear decline as temperature increases. Additionally, the gas mass flow rate demonstrates a negative correlation with the microchannel length but a positive association to its hydraulic diameter. The primary influencing factors on gas leakage rates are hierarchically ranked as follows: pressure difference, microchannel cross-sectional area, temperature, microchannel length, and microchannel hydraulic diameter.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.471-475
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• 2006

Filling the microchannels is very important in designing micro-injection molding, microdevices, etc. In this paper, flow dynamics was studied in injection molding with microchannels. A transparent PMMA mold was designed and the flow dynamics was observed. The experiment was performed using poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) and polyacrylamide (PA) aqueous solutions. The transignt dynamic flow and flow competition between the base plate and the microchannels were observed. The flow observation was used to explain previous filling length results in microchannels during micro-injection molding.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.718-725
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• 2011

Characteristics of flow boiling heat transfer in microchannels were investigated experimentally. The microchannels consisted of 9 parallel trapezoidal channels with each channel having 205 ${\mu}m$ of bottom width, 800 ${\mu}m$ of depth, $3.6^{\circ}$ of sidewall angle, and 7 cm of length. Tests were performed with R113 over a mass velocity range of 150~920 $kg/m^2s$, heat flux of 10~100 $kW/m^2$ and inlet pressures of 105~195 kPa. Flow boiling heat transfer coefficient in microchannels was found to be dominated by heat-flux. However the effect of mass velocity was not significant. Contrary to macrochannel trends, the heat transfer coefficient was shown to decrease with increasing thermodynamic equilibrium quality. A new correlation suitable for predicting flow boiling heat transfer coefficient was developed based on the laminar single-phase heat transfer coefficient and the nucleate boiling dominant equation. Comparison with the experimental data showed good agreement.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.64-66
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• 2002

This paper reports the design, modeling, fabrication and measurement of passive microvalves applicable to glaucoma implants. The proposed microvalves consisted of microchannels and chambers. The microchannels had a fixed fluidic resistance and generated a pressure difference. The chamber was located in the middle of the microchannels and acted as a buffer preventing an abrupt pressure change from an external variation of the fluid flow. To find optimum design parameters, six kinds of the microvalves were fabricated and experimented.