Thermally developing laminar liquid flow and heat transfer in microtubes at slip regime

Heat transfer enhancement is usually accompanied by an increase in pressure drop. With the implementation of the various drag reduction methods, the researches and applications of DR methods in heat transfer enhancement have attracted more and more attention. The research on drag reduction by introducing superhydrophobic surface shows that the slip regime plays an important role in drag reduction. This study numerically investigated thermally developing laminar liquid flow and heat transfer in microtubes at slip regime, with a hydraulic diameter of 200 μm, a constant heat flux of 10⁵ W/m², a Re of 100 and a slip length ls ranging from 2 μm to 20 μm. The dimensionless thermal entrance length increases with the increased slip length. The results show that microtube with slip boundary has the larger local Nusselt number and a longer thermal entrance length compared with available experimental data of non-slip boundary. Local and average Nusselt numbers are obtained, and start high and rapidly decrease with the increased dimensionless axial distance. Meanwhile, Nusselt number increases with the increased slip length. The correlations of the dimensionless thermal entrance length and local Nusselt number have mean absolute relative deviation of no more than 0.12% and 1.53% respectively, which can be used to optimize microchannel heat sinks.