Convective Heat Transfer in Microchannels of Noncircular Cross Sections: An Analytical Approach

Analytical solutions are presented for velocity and temperature distributions of laminar fully developed flow of Newtonian, constant property fluids in micro/minichannels of hyperelliptical and regular polygonal cross sections. The considered geometries cover several common shapes such as ellipse, rectangle, rectangle with round corners, rhombus, star-shape, and all regular polygons. The analysis is carried out under the conditions of constant axial wall heat flux with uniform peripheral heat flux at a given cross section. A linear least squares point matching technique is used to minimize the residual between the actual and the predicted values on the boundary of the channel. Hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics of the flow are derived; these include pressure drop and local and average Nusselt numbers. The proposed results are successfully verified with existing analytical and numerical solutions from the literature for a variety of cross sections. The present study provides analytical-based compact solutions for velocity and temperature fields that are essential for basic designs, parametric studies, and optimization analyses required for many thermofluidic applications.