EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF HYDRAULIC AND SINGLE-PHASE HEAT TRANSFER IN 0.130-MM CAPILLARY TUBE

The objective of the present study is to investigate the hydraulic characteristics and single-phase thermal behaviour of a capillary tube with internal diameter of 130 mum. As the Reynolds number varies in the range from 100 up to 8,000 in the experiments, and flow regimes from laminar to turbulent are thoroughly investigated. The laminar-to-turbulent flow transition is studied in depth. Experiments show that laminar-to-turbulent flow transition occurs for Reynolds number in the range 1,880-2,480, while heat transfer correlations in laminar and turbulent regimes, developed for conventional tubes, are not adequate for calculation of heat transfer coefficient in microtubes.