CONVECTIVE HEAT TRANSFER AND FLOW STABILITY IN CHANNELS PATTERNED WITH LONGITUDINAL SUPERHYDROPHOBIC GROOVES

Abstract

The profound ability of superhydrophobic surfaces in reducing the flow resistance has led to interests in convective heat transfer applications. The first part of this work deals with numerical simulation of thermal transport in a channel over structured surfaces. The surfaces considered consist of alternating ribs and grooves oriented parallel to the flow direction. Pressure-driven laminar flow under a hydrodynamically and thermally fully developed condition is explored. The second part of this work provided substantial physical insights pertaining to the nature of flow instabilities. The role played by superhydrophobic walls in influencing the stability of the resulting flows has been systematically examined via both local and BiGlobal linear stability analysis. In the last part of this work, turbulent heat transfer over such surfaces is explored. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) were performed to investigate the heat dissipation in channels containing groove-mounted surfaces.